


The "We" of It All

by Katranga



Series: A Scenic Route to Love [2]
Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - College/University, Blow Jobs, Domestic Fluff, Established Relationship, Fluff and Humor, Hand Jobs, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, Light Angst, M/M, Open and honest communication, Richie Tozier Cries During Sex, Smut, minor stan/pat, no memory loss
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-24
Updated: 2020-04-11
Packaged: 2021-02-28 00:54:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 31,092
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22875094
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Katranga/pseuds/Katranga
Summary: Richie wrinkles his nose at the grocery list filled with things like eggs, bread, and dish soap. “Okay. But only because I love you.”Eddie grins brightly, walking away with the cart. “Thank you, Richie! Can you grab us some onions?”Richie loves this ‘us’ business. The ‘we’ of it all. Gets his chest all fizzy like an old fashioned soda pop.--After a long, twisting road, Richie and Eddie are happily a couple. And living together for the summer between second and third year of college! An extended series of vignettes as they navigate their new relationship.
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Series: A Scenic Route to Love [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1606585
Comments: 83
Kudos: 310





	1. Prelude

**Author's Note:**

> Here it is!! We've reached fluff!! (/Mostly/ fluff, plus a few serious conversations). This fic is at 25k at the moment, and the chapter count is an estimate, but I don't anticipating this getting much longer.  
> I started posting a new reddie fic last week, "a strange sense of familiarity", and if you read that, you'll know I said I'd get this chap out this weekend, and it's past midnight on a Monday, but it's still technically the weekend.  
> This chapter is a lil prelude with some flashbacks, which aren't gonna feature in this story like they did in Kisses Taste Like Mint, but I thought it was a good way to kick it off. It was gonna be part of an actual first chapter, but then I ran out of time so I just split it up, and I'll post another chapter tomorrow once I'm done editing.  
> For now, please enjoy!

It’s not a discussion, or even an offer, that Eddie will be staying at Richie’s for the summer, rather an assumption mutually agreed upon as fact by both parties.

“So my roommates will be out of here on the seventeenth,” Richie tells Eddie over the phone. “Your last exam’s on the twentieth, yeah?”

Richie’s exams, if you could call them that, are already done. He submitted his last forged essay to a desperate freshman yesterday. Second year is officially over, and good riddance. It held Richie by the throat for most of it, shaking him around like a rag doll before finally laying him down ever so gently in Eddie’s tender hands. 

“Yeah, and I need to be out of my dorm by the twenty fifth,” Eddie replies. “You’re cool if I stay with you for a bit, right?”

Richie scoffs. “Obviously.” He can’t wait to have him back in his arms for longer than a weekend. “Where else would you be staying? What did you do last year?”

“Sublet from a student house like yours. Well, not anywhere as mouldy and asbestos-filled as yours—”

“Stuff it, I’ll have plenty of time to deep-clean before you get here.”

“Please do. I’d hate to get black lung this summer.”

“No, of course. No black lung for  _ my _ baby,” Richie says.

“Don’t call me that,” he replies tersely.

Richie can see the sour expression that accompanies that tone. He smiles into his phone. “I miss you.”

“Not for much longer,” Eddie assures him with just as much fondness.

Richie spends his next few days cleaning, and thinking about Eddie. The only new activity there is cleaning.

Looking back on his life through his new gay goggles, ending up with Eddie feels like the only possible outcome. An inevitability set in stone. Obviously it made sense that he hadn’t seen it at the time, but now he’s kicking himself. Why had he spent so much time worrying that Eddie wouldn’t be it for him? 

Now, as Richie gets excited about his summer with Eddie, he can see that their entire lives have kind of been leading up to playing house for real, too.

Like when they were little and playing with Richie’s sister’s old kitchen play set, pretending to make Thanksgiving dinner, and drawing all inspiration from Richie’s parents and couples on TV. 

Richie kept sending Eddie out the “store” to pick up last-minute cranberry sauce, and then stuffing, and then butter. 

“Is that everything we need?” Eddie huffed, slapping a yellow plastic piece of cheese—as close to a stick of butter that they had—onto the plastic stove top Richie was frying a potato on.

“Let me check.” Richie looked under the couch cushion, which for their purposes was a fridge. “Oh no, Eddie!”

Eddie groaned like an actor in an infomercial. “What now?”

He rolled his eyes dramatically, spreading his hands. “We forgot the turkey!”

Eddie hipchecked him out of the way. “Let me look. You can never find anything in here.” 

He did his own search of the fridge-couch while Richie ran back to the stove to check on his burning potatoes. He was determined to ruin this Thanksgiving dinner so they could go out for pretend Chinese food instead (his family had done that last year, and he’d been brainstorming ways to sabotage this year’s Thanksgiving so he wouldn’t have to eat his mom’s dry turkey ever again).

“Here!” Eddie presented a brown throw pillow to Richie. “I found the turkey!”

“No, no.” Richie shook his head sensibly. “That’s not a turkey, that's a pillow."

Eddie’s face screwed up tight and he hit Richie over the head with the pillow.  _ “You’re _ a turkey!”

“Gobble, gobble!” He stuck his neck out like a bird. “You gonna cook me, Eds?”

Eddie snapped open the plastic oven door and started shoving Richie into it, which was exactly how Richie’s mom stumbled upon them five minutes later.

Not all together different from when they were older, with any combination of the losers at somebody’s house without parental supervision, and they all scrounged together a snack from scraps and leftovers.

Independent and free to do as they pleased, like when they were at the clubhouse—which was even better, without any threat of parents walking in on them putting whipped cream on top of M&Ms and Cheetos, like the aforementioned kitchen escapades. 

The clubhouse was free of responsibilities except cleaning up a little when Eddie or Stan (or Ben) complained it was getting gross. It had to get  _ really _ gross for Ben to ask for a clean up, usually after Eddie and Stan had both been ignored (and summarily refused to tidy up all by themselves  _ again) _ and then even Richie would give his best effort, since Ben had made the clubhouse for them and all. 

Richie loved that fucking clubhouse. It had him imagining a future where they’d all go in on a house and live together, without parents or siblings or homework to bring them down. Just seven of the best of friends hanging out forever.

It was the only future that materialized in his brain when he got asked about his plans after high school graduation, while his friends were planning to scatter to the winds in schools across the country.

“What about after we graduate college?” Richie had whispered to Eddie during the last group sleepover in Derry. It was at Ben’s, because Eddie’s mom put up the least fight when he wanted to go to Ben’s, and maybe Eddie hadn’t told her that Richie and Bev would be there. 

A sinking feeling in Richie’s stomach was telling him it would be their last group sleepover  _ ever _ , especially since the nights of all of them cramming together under one roof to watch bad movies and eat too much junk food until they passed out had become less and less frequent as they’d grown older.

“What about it?” Eddie yawned, turning in his sleeping bag to face him. They were on the floor. Bev had got the couch, Stan had passed out on the love seat, and Bill, Ben and Mike were in sleeping bags on the other side of the coffee table.

They were all quiet except for snoring. Richie hadn’t even been sure Eddie was still awake until he replied.

“Where are we gonna live?” Richie asked.

_ “We?” _

“Yeah.” He had a stomachache from chugging three root beers in a row so he could burp through 'The Star Spangled Banner', so he didn’t have the mental capacity to decide if he’d meant all the losers together, or just him and Eddie.

“Well I’m not coming back here,” Eddie scoffed.

“You tell your mom that?”

His face darkened, and he threw a discarded popcorn kernel at Richie’s face. “Where are you going, Trashmouth?”

He flicked the popcorn off his pillow back at Eddie. “Wherever you’re going, Spaghetti.”

“Is that so?”

“Yeah.” He swallowed, heart racing in anticipation of Eddie telling him to fuck off. “You think getting rid of me is as easy as going to college in a different city?”

He smiled softly, round cheeks highlighted by the moon shining through the window. “You just gonna follow me around my whole life?”

That didn’t sound like an altogether terrible way to plan his future. “Maybe. Depends how this drama degree turns out.”

“You’re gonna do great.” Eddie rubbed a hand over his eyes, voice fading. “Just study.”

Richie watched him. “Okay, well?” He licked his lips. “What do you think? For after. Roomies?”

“Live with you?” he repeated quietly.

He nodded instead of saying that he’d miss his friends so much it caught his throat sometimes, and he needed something to hold onto when he set off alone into the big wide world. Even if it didn’t end up happening, he needed the comforting lie to keep him afloat.

Eddie narrowed his eyes at him, and then just ended up closing them. He looked a second away from passing out. “As long as you clean more than you do in the clubhouse.”

“Yeah, Eds. Promise.”

“Then sure.”

Richie reached out to touch the back of Eddie’s hand, and if someone had asked him why, he wouldn't have been able to give an answer. 

Eddie’s eyes fluttered open at the light touch of Richie’s fingers. Luckily he had his own ideas about what it meant. He smiled tiredly and held out his pinky, and Richie hooked it around his.

Eddie left them connected like that on his sleeping bag, eyes falling shut again. 

Richie hadn’t recognized the shaky feeling pounding in his chest during that whispered conversation, but he does now. It’s only gotten stronger, impossible to ignore—and now he doesn’t have to.

After picking Eddie up from the train station, Richie’s bursting with love, and he grabs Eddie in a kiss as soon as he gets the front door closed behind them. 

They drag Jordan’s empty dresser to Richie’s room for Eddie to unpack in, and then throw his suitcases into some closet they forget about until September.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'll probably be updating this every two weeks (except for that chapter I'll be posting tomorrow) because I'm working on that other fic--it's got a lot of smut, with reddie meeting up before chapter two, so [check that out](https://archiveofourown.org/chapters/54314680) in the meantime if you're interested.  
> I'm [katranga](http://katranga.tumblr.com) on tumblr if you have any questions about anything!  
> I hope you're excited to read this, because I am so excited to start posting! Thanks for reading!


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello! As promised, a real chapter! We got grocery shopping, we got fluff, we got open and honest communication. What more can you ask for?  
> I think there's like one Eddie POV vignette per chapter in this fic? Idk, still figuring out which parts are gonna add up to be chapters, but this chapter does have Eddie POV and it mentions Sonia Kaspbrak, like, being a bad mom. Just as a heads up.

Clara leaves the city in two days and, perplexingly, spends one of them with Richie and Eddie. She says it’s for her new room measurements—Jordan had flat out refused to re-up the lease for next year, and Clara had been ready with a pen and a co-signer to fill up the empty room come September, despite nobody actually offering it to her. They hadn’t argued, either.

So she says she popped in to measure her room so she knew what would fit, but that takes all of five minutes, and then she just hangs out, mostly telling Richie to keep the house as clean as it is now when she moves in.

“Don’t hold your breath,” Eddie mutters. He’s got a screwdriver and he’s fiddling with their broken standing fan. For now, they’re on the patio out back where there’s at least a breeze driving the heat away.

“I’ll clean!” Richie insists. Clara brightens up and he corrects, “For Eddie, the man of my dreams and forever sweetheart. You, Clara? Eddie gave you good advice. Don’t hold your breath.”

She crosses her arms. “I’ll remember that when you’re whining at me for rides.”

Richie straightens and flashes her a charming grin. “Speaking of rides!”

He sets in on begging her to drive him and Eddie to their first grocery trip together, because hauling groceries on the bus is the fucking worst, and everyone knows it. She offers absolutely no sympathy for their plight.

“You’re gonna have to bus it all summer anyway,” Clara says. 

“So do us a solid and start us off right!” Richie says. “C’mon, it’s student discount day at the store by the mall.”

She drinks the last of their orange juice, which Richie had given to her in a clear bribe. “And you’re welcome to go. There’s a creep who works there that always hits on me.”

“He probably won’t be working,” he dismisses. He puts on his best puppy dog eyes and elbows Eddie to do the same. “Please!”

Eddie puts the screwdriver down and pouts at Clara. “Pretty please? I can make Richie keep the house clean for at least the first week after I leave.”

She throws her hands up with a sigh. “Fine. But I don’t believe that shit about cleaning, so you’re buying me a soft pretzel.” She points at Richie, who nods. “And don’t leave me alone in there.”

Richie salutes her. “Two completely qualified bodyguards, at your service!”

The three of them argue about the radio station the entire eleven-minute car ride, and keep up that energy all the way into the store. 

Eddie has a list, and the cart, and he grabs a discount flyer from the front. He’s ready for business. 

Richie’s eye wanders, and he tosses whatever catches his fancy into the cart.

“Richie?” Eddie says when he turns around from staring at the whole wheat bread display in narrow-eyed concentration. “Where did we budget for buying the whole bakery?”

Richie tosses three bags of chips into the cart to accompany a package of macaroons and an apple pie.

“Don’t worry, before I pay, I toss out everything that doesn’t really speak to me in the  _ moment _ .”

“You’re shitting me.”

“He’s really not,” Clara sighs, dropping in a Reese’s Cup. “You can buy me that, too. For psychological damages.”

Eddie gapes at her. “Is this why didn’t wanna take us grocery shopping?”

She tilts her head back and in a strained voice says, “He’ll go back and put everything where he found it and end up picking something new, but by the time he gets to the register it doesn’t  _ speak _ to him anymore and—”

“Okay!” Richie cuts her off. He returns the macaroons and pie where he found them. “But I’m keeping the chips.”

“Richie.” Eddie pauses, like he’s gonna say ‘love of my life’ or some other affectionate title to butter him up, like Richie does. Instead he just sighs through his nose and hands him a piece of paper. “I’m gonna give you this list. And we’re gonna shop like normal people, just to see how you like it, okay?”

Richie wrinkles his nose at the list filled with monotonous items like eggs, bread, and dish soap. “Okay. But only because I love you.”

He grins brightly, walking away with the cart. “Thank you, Richie! Can you grab us some onions?”

Richie loves this ‘us’ business. The ‘we’ of it all. Gets his chest all fizzy like an old fashioned soda pop.

He bounds over to the vegetables and procures a bag of yellow onions. What Eddie intends to do with them is beyond Richie, since he’s pretty sure Eddie has never cooked an onion in his life, but Richie loves a little mystery in guy.

As Richie passes the bananas, Clara glares at him for some reason. Or maybe that’s just her normal face, it’s hard to tell sometimes. 

He checks the list and pauses. He wonders how many bananas he and Eddie will get through before they go bad. The freezer is currently overflowing with black bananas because Clara had seen his roommates toss 1 (one) at the start of the year and she talked about food waste and baked goods for so long that they just started throwing them in the freezer like she said. Shocking no one, none of them ever made banana bread, or muffins, or smoothies or whatever she’d said frozen bananas were good for.

“There you are, baby!” Clara’s exclamation brings Richie out of his musings.

Over by the lettuce, Eddie positions himself next to Clara and stiffly puts his arm around her waist. “Hey. Sweetheart. This guy bothering you?”

It’s the absolute worst impression of a douchebag boyfriend Richie’s ever seen. Eddie’s pastel yellow shorts are doing him no favours.

There’s a blonde guy in front of Clara in an apron. From this angle, Richie only sees the back of his head, but it’s gotta be the guy he and Eddie are supposed to be keeping away from her. Shit, at least one of them can follow instructions.

“Yeah, actually.” Clara cocks her head at the guy.

Eddie scowls at him, which is much more realistic. “Fuck off, then. Quit harassing my girlfriend.”

“I wasn’t—” the guy starts, hands raised in surrender.

“Can I talk to your manager?” Eddie asks.

Richie covers his mouth to hide his guffaw. The grocery guy apparently still hears him, and Richie ducks behind the bananas when he starts to turn.

By the time he pops up again, the creep is nowhere to be seen. And Clara is all over Eddie.

“Thank you!” She’s hanging off his arm. She gives Richie the stink-eye once he returns to them. “Oh, Eddie, thank you so much for doing the one thing I asked you to do, and not wander away to stare at fruit you know you won’t fucking eat.”

Eddie laughs.

Richie puts his hands on his hips, fighting his own amusement. “How come you call her sweetheart and not me?”

“Because that word does not belong in my mouth.”

“I’ll tell ya what does—”

Eddie snatches the onions from him. “Trashmouth is all you’re ever gonna get, and there’s a reason for that.”

“Do people actually call you that?” Clara asks in bemusement. She’s still hugging Eddie’s arm.

“Quit harassing my boyfriend,” Richie says flatly.

Eddie’s face lights red and then he wriggles out of Clara’s grasp once he’s confirmed the grocery creep is out of sight. Clara takes control of the cart and waves at them to follow her out of the produce department.

The two of them trail behind her, and Eddie mutters, “Boyfriend?”

“Yeah?” Richie replies. “What would you rather? Partner? Paramour?  _ Lover?” _

“Ugh.” He pulls a face, but he’s fighting a smile. And he’s so fucking cute!

Richie reaches out to pinch his cheek, but Clara interrupts their intricate flirting ritual.

“Boys,” she says, now two aisles ahead of them. “If we could make this shopping trip take  _ less _ than an hour, I’d be so relieved. Shocked as well, but—”

“Aye, aye, Captain!” Eddie says, rushing to catch up with her. 

Richie follows suit. He hops up onto the front of the grocery cart. “You know what’ll really speed things up?”

Clara jerks the cart back and forth so Richie has to grab it to hang on. “Get off—”

Richie grins at Eddie. “If I stand on this and you push the cart down the aisle while I throw things in.”

“That’s not gonna work,” Eddie dismisses.

“No shit,” Clara mutters.

Richie grabs a box of Cheez-Its and slam dunks it in the cart. He throws Eddie a smirk. “Prove it.”

Eddie’s eyes narrow. He clears his throat and gestures at Clara. “If you’ll excuse me?”

She steps back, shaking her head. “You’re excused,  _ so _ excused.”

Eddie grins sharply at Richie and then rockets them down the aisle.

“Dumbasses!” Clara calls like she regrets ever becoming friends with Richie. 

Richie buys her that soft pretzel, and the Reese’s Cup, plus an iced coffee and a plastic friendship bracelet she says she’s never gonna wear, because Richie and Eddie  _ do _ end up crashing into a jumbo display of cereal boxes, after which they are immediately escorted off the premises before checking out, so she has to drive them to a different grocery store where they start all over again.

The thing is, Eddie loves Richie. With all his heart. Wants to be around him all the time. Richie makes him happy, makes him laugh, gets butterflies fluttering in his stomach—all that shit they sing about in the songs Eddie had always connected to Richie without really knowing why.

So with his love-blinders on, Eddie had perhaps not considered  _ all _ of what the Richie-ness of living with Richie would entail. The house was spotless when he’d first arrived—Richie had deep-cleaned down to the floorboards, and he’d done a great job.

But it had quickly become clear that keeping up that level of cleanliness was beyond Richie’s capabilities.

It’s not like Eddie hadn’t expected that; he understood who Richie was as a person. But he’d assumed the honeymoon phase would last a little longer than twelve hours. His first morning at Richie’s, he’d woken up to Richie’s wrinkled pajamas on the floor, his used towel bunched up in the bathroom, and a littering of dirty dishes across the counter from the welcome breakfast he’d made.

Obviously Eddie melted at the sight of Richie’s proud grin while he set a stack of fluffy pancakes in front of him. “I didn’t even burn them!” he bragged. “Well, not all of them.”

They ate a happy first breakfast, but Eddie could really only hold off until the end of the meal to say, “I love this, and I love you, but I’d also love if we didn’t live in a pig sty.”

And Richie nodded, and they both cleaned the kitchen, and when Eddie showed him the rest of his mess upstairs, Richie kissed him and saluted him and promised him he’d work on it.

Because it isn’t like this is a  _ surprise _ to anyone. Richie’s a slob, Eddie’s a neat freak. It’s not news. 

Eddie keeps his calm the first week of asking Richie to rinse the sink after brushing his teeth, and to put the cap back on the toothpaste, and hang up his towel, and put his clothes in the hamper, and at least leave his dishes in the sink to soak instead of forgetting cups and bowls all through the house.

He knew it was going to be like this.

On the flip side though, Eddie thinks as he stares at a new glob of toothpaste slowly crusting over in the bathroom sink, Richie also knew it would be like this. 

So why, after two weeks, is Eddie repeating the same shit he’d said after welcome pancakes?

“Richie!” 

And he hates the way his voice sounds, like he’s mad at him. He’s never mad at Richie, he loves him. He’s annoyed sometimes, irritated—miffed, even. But not mad.

Richie’s footfalls sound up the stairs and then he’s hanging in the doorway, big glasses magnifying his faux-innocent eyes. “Yes, Eddie? Love of my life, apple of my eye, holder of my heart?”

And  _ because _ Eddie’s not mad at him, and because he loves this annoying, goofy man (who’s stuffed into one of Eddie’s shirts because Richie can’t be assed to do laundry), he keeps letting Richie get away with this.

(And he hates that wording even, because they’re both adults, and it’s Richie’s house—Eddie’s not “letting” Richie “get away” with anything.)

Eddie’s mouth doesn’t twitch out of its firm line. If Richie doesn’t start giving just a little, Eddie knows he’s gonna explode later over something little and stupid and he’s gonna hate himself for it.

“If I hold your heart, then why don’t you rinse the sink like I’ve asked you to every day since I got here?”

Richie lifts a shoulder. “I get distracted?”

“By what?”

“Thoughts of the most handsome man in the world in my bedroom?”

Eddie grimaces. “If you’re implying this is cum—”

Richie barks a laugh and tries to wrap his arms around Eddie’s waist. “No, Eddie. Get your mind out of the gutter.”

Despite not really wanting to, Eddie wriggles out of his grip and gestures at the sink. “That’s where this should all be! Down the drain, in the gutter.” He smacks the tap on and splashes some water around. “That’s it, get it off before it dries, and it’s not that hard.”

Richie pouts, and it’s very cute. “Then why can’t you just do it, you’re the one who cares—”

Which is decidedly  _ not _ cute.

“I shouldn’t be the only one caring,” Eddie snaps. Richie knows Eddie’s neurotic about keeping stuff clean. He signed up for this. A whole summer of it! Eddie staring down the barrel of the rest of summer spent nagging Richie to clean up after himself has him spitting, “Just do what I say, Richie, I don’t—”

The words turn to ash in his mouth. 

“Fuck, nevermind,” Eddie backtracks quietly. A cold sweat breaks out over his back. “I’m sorry, don’t—nevermind.”

He wants to get out of the bathroom and hide in their room, but to do that he’d have to push past Richie slouching in the doorway, and he knows Richie won’t just let him go.

“No, you’re right.” Richie’s brow wrinkles. “I’m sorry.”

Eddie shakes his head. “No, no, I shouldn’t have yelled. I’m sorry, I knew what living with you was gonna be like. Don’t apologize—”

He shouldn’t be apologizing when it wasn’t his fault. That’s—Eddie was always doing that growing up.

“No, yeah, I’m a fucking slob,” Richie argues incredulously. “And I know it’s gross, and you keep telling me to clean up, so I need to get with the fucking program—”

“No, I can’t just yell and get mad and make you— _ fuck.” _ Eddie’s grip turns white-knuckled on the sink. He stares at a crack in the floor tile.

He can’t just get pissed and yell and make Richie feel like shit to get what he wants.

Richie’s feet appear in his field of vision, and Eddie curls his fist in the hem of his shirt to keep him close. 

“It’s okay,” Richie says gently as he takes hold of him. Eddie drops his forehead against his collarbone and lets Richie’s wide hand circling his back regulate his breathing. “You’re not making me do anything, Eds. Cleaning’s like—like eating vegetables, y’know? I don’t wanna do it, but it’s what responsible adults do. I wanna be a responsible adult with you.”

Responsible. Richie, responsible. The words don’t really fit together.

But that’s the thing—they’re adults, they’re living on their own, away from Derry and all its choking influences.

They get to decide who to be.

“Yeah,” Eddie says. And because he’s the one who wanted them to be honest all the time in the first place, he tries to explain himself. “I just, I don’t wanna get pissed and yell. My mom—”

Eddie pauses, crunching on words that taste like copper on his tongue.

Arguments with his mom start off with her acting confused, and when he continues to stand up for himself she guilts him. And if he still doesn’t cave, she reveals what’s been lurking underneath her love the whole time—rage that Eddie dare defy her. 

Eddie’s not like that. He’s not gonna throw anger around like it makes him right.

He doesn’t know how to say any of that without having a panic attack, but Richie understands anyway.

Richie tucks Eddie’s head under his chin. “I know, Eds. But this isn’t like that, I promise. I love you.”

“I love you,” Eddie replies, eager to parrot back the words that mean so much to him. Especially when he feels like this, awful and small—he revels in the repetition, the assurance that the feeling’s still there. 

He squeezes Richie tighter, so grateful that Richie  _ knows _ him. Knows him and loves him anyway. 

“You know you’re cute when you’re mad, right?” Richie says after a moment.

Eddie groans, tilting his head back. “Shut the fuck up, Richie.”

He smiles, and it warms Eddie’s chest like honey in tea, and then Richie’s kissing him soft and slow. Eddie unravels in his arms, marvelling at how easy it is to be loved by Richie. 

Then Richie presses him against the counter, and Eddie remembers the toothpaste and—

“Hey, hey, hey,” he breathes, laying a hand on Richie’s chest.

“Uh huh?” His pupils are blown wide as he looks down at him.

Eddie forgets the purpose of interrupting him for a second.

Then he says, “Chore chart.”

“Okay?”

“We should make one.”

Richie valiantly aborts an eye roll halfway through.

“Like, we don’t have to put it on the fridge or anything,” Eddie rushes ahead. “It can just be a verbal conversation splitting responsibilities, but I need to know stuff is actually gonna get done. Like I’ll do laundry if you always cook, okay?”

Richie snorts. “Well I think I’ll  _ have _ to always cook, since you can’t even boil pasta.” 

Eddie had tried to make spaghetti last night and it all globbed together into mush. Not his finest moment.

Eddie ignores the jab to continue, “And you can clean the bathroom every week and take the garbage out, and I’ll vacuum and do the dishes.”

“Dude, we’ll both do the dishes. There are always so many.”

“There really are, aren’t there? Where do they fucking come from?”

“I dunno. Let’s do what my dad did whenever my mom was away and buy paper plates.”

And they don’t do that, but Eddie does breathe easier after their conversation, once Richie starts helping keep their home clean.

It turns out Eddie had read some housekeeping magazine that included a list of kitchen essentials every home should have, which was why he bought such absurd grocery items as onions, carrots, and potatoes. 

“Who cooks?” Richie asks, once again closing the cupboard door on their neglected root vegetables while searching for a snack. It’s raining outside, and he’s not really hungry, but being stuck in the house is making him antsy.

“It’s supposed to be you.”

“The fuck you expect me to do with a carrot?” Richie retorts. “Eggs, mac and cheese, bagels, spaghetti—these are the meals where I shine.”

“Only two of those are meals.”

“A bagel’s a meal if you put an egg on it!” he announces wisely.

Eddie sighs and opens the freezer. “Speaking of food we’re never gonna eat—bananas. You know how many frozen pizzas we could stuff in here if it weren’t full of bananas?”

“You wanna throw them out?” 

“That’s so wasteful.”

“Ugh, you sound like Clara.”

“What did she want you to do with them?”

“I dunno, bake?” Richie hops to sit on the counter. “My mom always made banana chocolate chip muffins, they were pretty good.”

“Yes!” Eddie’s face lights up, and he points a frozen banana at Richie. “She made the best muffins!”

Richie nods, then tilts his head. “You know, eventually she only made them when I said you were gonna be around.”

He grins big. “It’s ‘cause I was fucking her.”

Richie makes a big production of shaking his head. “That’s so disgusting, how can you talk about my very own mother like that?”

Eddie laughs. “You should call her and ask for the recipe.”

“Don’t one of your little magazines have a recipe?”

“I read them at the library, do you seriously think I bought a housekeeping magazine?”

Richie squints at him. “Do you even—you don’t have a New York library card.”

“I know.” He shrugs. “I took yours when you were sleeping. Call your mom.”

“Edward, you’re a thief and a scoundrel,” Richie accuses, grabbing the phone off the counter with the hand that isn’t pointed at Eddie.

Richie dials the number without looking as Eddie slinks up into his personal space with a smirk.

He taps his fingers over his chest. “And what’re you gonna do about it?”

He curls his arm around Eddie’s waist. “I’ll steal you away—”

The phone clicks at his ear. “Tozier residence.”

It’s his dad.

“Is Mom there?” Richie asks.

“Who is this?”

“Ferris Bueller,” Richie says flatly.

“Richie?”

“Yeah, who the fuck else is asking for your wife and calling her mom?”

His voice draws away from the phone, “Maggie, your son’s calling for you.”

Richie gives Eddie an eye roll, and Eddie kisses him on the chin before returning to the freezer.

His mom comes on. “Richie, is that you?”

“Hey, Ma.”

“What’s wrong? Do you need money?”

“What? No—I mean, are you offering?”

“What do you need money for?”

“Condoms?” he tries.

Eddie glares at him.

“Are you—” His mom starts, but Richie jumps to interrupt her.

“Eddie’s just over and—”

“That’s lovely! Give him my best.”

Richie nods at Eddie. “My mom gives you her best.”

Eddie sticks his tongue between his teeth and dry humps the air. 

Richie reaches out to whack him, but Eddie darts away. “Yeah, he sends his love.”

Eddie throws his head back and laughs. Richie wants to kiss his throat.

“It’s so sweet how you all still keep in touch,” his mom says. “How’s Bill doing?” 

“Great, he’s loving his major.”

“And Stanley?”

Richie taps his foot, hoping to finish this phone call on this half of the millennium. “He’s good, he’s got a girlfriend now.”

“Oh, how nice. Have you met her?”

“Not yet, I keep telling him we should—” He stops, because he almost said the words ‘double date’ to his mother, in the context of himself being part of the double date.

“Are you seeing anyone?” she asks the exact question he’d been trying to avoid. She didn’t even ask if he had a girlfriend, just—if he was seeing anyone.  _ Anyone _ .

Richie watches Eddie rifle through cupboards until he procures, from the depths of their kitchen, a bag of sugar, which he triumphantly shows off to Richie.

He imagines, for a moment, telling his mom that he’s seeing Eddie this very moment. She’d sigh and say she meant is he dating anyone? And Richie would say that’s what he meant too, he’s dating Eddie. 

He’s not sure he’d ever be able to reroute the conversation back to a muffin recipe if he did that. 

“Ah, nah, y’know,” Richie mumbles some mealymouthed reply.

He feels a bit like a coward, but his heart’s thudding in his throat and his knees have turned jelly-like at just the throwaway thought, so he might pass out if he tells his mom the truth right now.

“Anyway,” he pushes onward, “I was wondering if I could get your banana muffin recipe off you? The one with the chocolate chips?”

There’s a pause before she says, “Are you baking?”

She sounds maybe more surprised than if he’d come out.

“Yeah. Eddie misses them.”

Eddie pops over for a second and says into the phone, “They were really good, Mrs. T!”

“Oh—sure,” Richie’s mom says, still a little flustered. “He hasn’t been back here either, has he?”

“No.”

She hums. “Probably for the best, the poor kid. His mother…”

She trails off, possibly at a loss for words on how to best describe Sonia Kaspbrak.

“So, uh, the recipe?” Richie prompts.

“Right! I have a few cookbooks I can mail you, if you’re expanding your expertise into the culinary arts.”

“Um, yeah, whatever. Just the muffin recipe for now, though? I’ll uh—” He sees the next half hour of his life passing with his mom asking him about his life while slowly giving him baking instructions he probably won’t understand in the first place. “I’ll give the phone to Eddie, and he can write it down, okay?”

Eddie gives him a dirty look. Richie winks at him.

“Oh, okay,” she says. “Before you go, your sister will be in town next month for your dad’s birthday, would you be able to make it? She’s bringing a boyfriend, you can bring Eddie if you want.”

Which hits like a one-two punch to Richie’s gut. Maybe a one-two-three punch. No, he’s not going back to Derry. For his dad’s birthday. And he’s not bringing Eddie as a counterpart to his sister’s boyfriend.

“If you can’t come, we can work something else out some other time,” his mom adds in response to his silence.

“Yeah, no, uh, I’ve got some job prospects lined up, I don’t think I’ll be able to just take off.” Which isn’t untrue. He’d been on a few interviews. Hopefully he’d have a job by then. It didn’t mean he wouldn’t dick off for a weekend if he really needed to.

He just wouldn’t want to.

“Oh, good!” his mom says. “So you can buy your own condoms.”

Richie snorts, and in that moment he kinda wishes he could make it out to see her next month. But he’s never stepping foot in Derry again.

“Exactly, Ma. Anyway, here’s Eddie!” He presses the phone into Eddie’s hand and then rifles through the kitchen looking for what he imagines baking instruments are.

Lucas’ hobby of using weed in baking is the only reason there’s flour, baking soda, and a muffin tin in the house. Eddie’s magazine-based grocery list is why they have chocolate chips. But in the end, they do have everything they need, which is lucky because they almost certainly would’ve tried to work with what they had instead of going out in the rain to fetch the right ingredients. 

“What does overmix mean?” Richie asks, squinting at Eddie’s scribbled notes.

“Mix. Overmix.” Eddie shrugs. “Don’t mix it over.”

Richie pours flour into their wet mixture. “Mix it over what?” 

They’re working together better than when they played house as kids, but he has no idea if anything they’ve done so far is right. Whether or not the muffins turn out, at least they’d get rid of some bananas.

“Why did you never help your mother with baking?” Eddie asks as though their combined ineptitude was Richie’s fault.

“I was too busy running around after you,” he retorts. “You think I had time to make a—?”

Eddie wipes a piece of mushy banana off Richie’s cheek, and Richie dodges forward trying to lick his finger. 

He giggles and dances away before Richie can manage. “Muffin?”

“Yes, honey?”

His mouth does this weird thing where he’s trying to scowl, but it turns into a grin halfway through. “I obviously wasn’t calling you muffin, you nimrod.”

“Why not?” He sets his chin on his hand and flutters his lashes. “Aren’t I soft and sweet like a muffin?”

“You’re annoying like this recipe,” he says flatly.

Richie laughs, stirs the mixture once more and shrugs. “Chip me up, babe!”

Eddie tosses a chocolate chip into each of their mouths before dumping the rest in the bowl.

They do the dishes while the muffins are baking, and they turn out pretty damn good, which is an unexpected upside.

“Thanks for cleaning up with me,” Eddie says, grabbing his third muffin. They’d cooled off enough that he doesn’t have to blow on it before he gobbles it down.

Richie makes a face. “You don’t have to thank me.”

After their talk in the bathroom, he’s now taking keeping a clean house seriously, like he should’ve from the start. Before he leaves a room, he looks it over with his Eddie-goggles on to make sure he didn’t leave a mess previously invisible to him. It’s become a habit, just another way to love Eddie.

“I know, but I know how much you hate cleaning.”

“I hate it because it’s boring.” He knocks shoulders with him. “Nothing’s boring with you.”

“You’re not even sweet, you’re just cheesy,” Eddie says, apparently already immune to Richie’s charms. “Maybe I should call you gorgonzola.”

“Still a pet name!”

He shakes his head, waving a hand in front of his wrinkled nose. “Stinky.”

Richie gasps in delight. “Call me Stinky Muffin!”

_ “Rich _ —” But Eddie’s bubbling laughter eats up any attempt of a disgusted reply.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This fic has no overarching plot other than them loving each other--can loving each other be a plot? So these chapters are just kinda gonna end where they end, because I need to stop the banter somewhere lol.   
> I had a lot of fun writing these scenes, please let me know what you thought!! Thanks for reading!


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> See, if I'd planned this a bit better, I probably would've put the first vignette of this chapter at the end of the last chapter, but I didn't, so there's one conversation about sexual boundaries off the top and then the rest is their completely unrelated trip to Stan and Patty's but ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯ we're here now.  
> warnings for discussion of homophobia and brief mentions of antisemitism

Richie’s sitting at the living room table flipping through wanted ads hoping some fun summer job will jump out at him. He’s gonna need to replenish his bank account account after their trip to Stan’s in a week, but it’s mostly busboy positions, plus an awful lot of those stand-on-the-corner sign flipper gigs.

Eddie comes back from a run, despite his claims that New York smog will eventually give him asthma for real. He’s gone out almost every day since he moved in three weeks ago, and whenever he says that Richie can join him, Richie says dancing around the living room is his cardio.

“So I was talking to Bev last night,” Eddie announces quickly, loudly, like he’d been thinking about it his whole run and couldn’t wait any longer to blurt it out.

Richie looks up at Eddie with a highlighter hanging from his mouth. He’s wearing his little running shorts and Richie’s old Looney Tunes shirt that Eddie cut the hem of a little too short, so it’s almost a crop top.

It takes Richie a second to respond, and when he does it’s just, “Uh huh?”

Eddie turns down the stereo that’s blasting the local college station. Not _Richie’s_ college. Somebody’s college. He doesn’t like being home alone in the quiet—one of the many reasons he’s doubling down on his job search, since Eddie scored an office gig that started soon. 

“She said we should probably talk about how far we wanna go.” Eddie’s face is bright red, which a moment ago Richie had attributed to the aforementioned exercise, but now he’s not sure.

“With our relationship?” Richie asks, voice pitched higher than he’d like. It had been like two months since their first kiss. What’s Bev expecting them to have to talk about?

“No, in—” He flails a hand upwards. “—in the bedroom.”

Richie deflates with relief. He’d much rather talk about sex than the future. 

They’ve been taking it slow. Maybe. Neither have a good frame of reference for how far they “should” be at this point, but Richie doesn’t see that as a problem. He’s always like self-paced activities better anyway. 

Though their sex life doesn’t strike him as a topic of conversation Bev would be too keen on.

“Okay,” Richie says. “But why is Bev telling us—?”

“Because I asked her how long she thought you’d be happy with dry humping,” Eddie dismisses the question with an equally dismissive response.

He laughs. “Why’d you ask _her?_ ”

“Because I didn’t wanna ask you!” He flops onto the arm of the couch. He points a finger at him when Richie opens his mouth. “If you ask me ‘why’ again I’ll kill you.”

Richie puts his head in his hand and blinks up at him with wide, innocent eyes. “But Eddie my dear, if you kill me, how ever will you come in your pants for the hundredth time?”

He tries to whack him in the head, but Richie just grabs his hand and tugs him off the arm of the couch to sit next to him, despite Eddie’s protests that his sweat would ruin the couch. The couch was ruined long before Eddie ever got to it. 

Eddie’s leg is bouncing away, so Richie covers his knee with his hand.

They’d gotten almost as good at open and honest communication as they had at making out, but Eddie was always the initiator—so obviously they hadn’t talked much about sex. 

This time it looks like Richie might be taking lead, which he’s happy to do, since he wants to get to the bottom of the implication that Eddie thinks Richie is gonna get tired of getting off with him.

“What’s up?” Richie asks. “Why wouldn’t I be happy with dry humping?”

Eddie gives him a flat look. “Because it’s _just_ dry humping, and you’ve been talking about getting your dick wet from an inappropriately young age?”

“Um. Pardon me.” Richie uses his free hand to lift a finger to argue against Eddie’s point. “I’m _joking_ about sex, usually with your mom. You can’t take that seriously.”

Eddie makes a disbelieving face.

Richie turns so he’s fully facing Eddie, legs tucked under him. “I mean it, don't worry about that. Just listen to me now. This is me being serious.”

He tries to straighten his face, tamp down his smile and flatten his brows.

Eddie wrinkles his nose. “You look like your dad.”

“Ew, dude, shut up!”

They laugh, and then Eddie drapes his arm along the back of the couch and leans his head against it. He takes a moment to consider Richie’s point. Richie does his best to rein in the horndog impression he’s spent his life mastering.

“You like what we’re doing, right?” Richie asks gently. That’s all that matters.

“Yeah,” says Eddie.

“I do, too. So we’re good.”

Eddie plays with the leather and string bracelets on Richie’s wrist. “But what do you _want_ to be doing?”

“Right now?” He squeezes his knee. “Getting you out of my shirt.”

His lips twitch, and he bites down on a smile. “It’s my shirt now. And don’t change the subject.” 

“Don’t change the subject of making out by talking about making out?” Richie lifts a brow. “You’re a hard man to please, Spaghetti.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Do I?”

“Like…” Eddie trails off, brows coming together as he thinks. “Obviously you like what we’re doing now—”

“Understatement, but alright.”

“—but if I wasn’t weird about it—”

“It’s not weird—”

“Shut up for a second,” Eddie says, and Richie laughs again. Eddie looks up at him from under his lashes, and then seems to realize what he’s doing and lifts his chin. “If—and I’m just asking for my own personal knowledge—if I was up for anything, how far would you wanna go right now?”

The phrase ‘up for anything’ throws Richie for a horny loop. “Like right this second?”

“Uh huh.”

And Richie’s imagination goes wild, but he pulls it together to decide what he’d actually be cool to do in the next minute if Eddie wanted it, too. “Uh, I’d wanna blow you, I guess.”

“Yeah?”

Richie nods, watching Eddie’s face carefully for his reaction. It’s the first time they’ve talked about what they’ be into, so Richie has no idea what Eddie is looking forward to doing or having done to him. He’d kind of expected him to nix the idea of mouths on dicks on principle, but besides his blush, his expression doesn’t change much.

“That’s as far as you’d wanna go?” Eddie asks. “Not like…” 

He widens his eyes meaningfully.

Richie lifts a brow back at him.

Eddie juts his chin out.

A charged moment passes. 

“No, I’m not seeing butt stuff in the near future for me,” Richie finally says, knowing exactly where both their heads are at. Eddie buries his embarrassed laughter behind his hand. “But I could get on my knees right now—”

 _“Richie!"_ A fresh blush blooms on Eddie’s cheeks, but he’s still laughing. 

“What?” he asks innocently. “You asked what I wanted to do to you—”

“Not at all my choice of phrasing—”

“Would you be down for a blow job?” Richie interrupts. “At some point?”

Eddie bites his lip, but it does nothing to hide his growing smile. He nods. “At some point.”

Richie grins, happy that their interests aren’t wildly off-base with each other. Pretty excited Eddie initiated talking about any of this, too. “We should talk about this more.”

“About what?”

“What we want,” Richie says. “I mean, I think we’re done for now, because I really just wanna kiss you—”

“You’re insatiable,” Eddie says with a roll of his eyes.

“Babe, do you see yourself in these shorts?” He drags his hand just a little higher up Eddie leg—so much of it exposed before those little gym shorts come into play. “And besides, you know what gets me hot, Eds?”

“You better not say my mom.”

Richie grins. “No, I’m being serious still. I’ll tell you what gets me going, what really gets my rocks off—”

He laughs, throwing his head back.

Richie kisses behind his ear. “It’s hot when you moan, and tell me that you like where I’m putting my hands. I like knowing when I’m about to get you off. But what also yanks my twister—”

Eddie lets out this breathy, put-upon sigh, like he’s fighting to not get turned on. “You’re the weirdest—”

“—and what makes me so comfortable,” Richie continues unbothered, “is that you trust me enough to tell me if you don’t like something.”

Eddie lifts his head to look at him once his words sunk in. “That’s so lame.”

Richie bites his shoulder and jerks away when Eddie tries to swat him. 

“Dude, do you know how nervous I’d be if _you_ were nervous?” Richie asks. “You’re keeping us both calm.”

“Really?” The one word holds so much disbelief.

Richie starts out all cool. “Eddie, baby—” 

“Don’t call me that.”

He changes tact and ducks in close, wrapping an arm around his shoulders. “Eduardo Spaghuardo, light of my life, you know it’s my first time for this stuff too, right? Sure, I talk a big game, but I’m a delicate flower—”

Eddie slaps a hand over his face to shut up him up, but he quickly replaces it with his mouth. “Delicate flower, huh?”

Richie nods, squeezing Eddie’s hips as Eddie settles on top of him. In his best Southern Belle, he says, “Please be gentle with me, suh. I’ve yet to experience the pleasure of a gentleman’s embrace— _oh_.”

Eddie palms Richie’s growing bulge through his shorts with a smirk. “So you’re done being serious, then?”

“I’m seriously turned on,” he retorts.

He licks into Richie’s mouth with a groan, “God, I fucking love you.”

Richie’s been suggesting they do a double date with Stan and his girlfriend for as long as he and Eddie have been together, which Stan, understandably, has always shot down. But somehow Patty finds out about the offer and makes Stan invite them over for a weekend visit, which right off the bat makes Patty Richie’s favourite girlfriend of Stan’s.

Richie and Eddie manage to squeeze in a trip the week before their summer jobs start. Richie ended up with a waitering gig, which will at least get him tips.

The night before they’re scheduled to leave for Stan’s, Richie gives him a call. It’s under the pretense of double-checking the time line of things, which Stan sees through immediately, since Eddie had just called Stan, and also double-checking _anything_ would obviously be Eddie’s job for the entirety of their relationship.

“What do you want, Rich?” Stan asks.

Richie’s on the living room couch while Eddie’s doing laundry. Once he’s done, they’ve rented some movies to spend the night watching. “Patty knows Eddie and I are, like, together, right?”

“Yes, you were the one who suggested a double date,” Stan reminds him. “She realizes you’re a couple.”

“And she’s, like, cool with it?”

“You think I’d be dating someone who wasn’t?”

Richie sinks further into the couch. “I dunno, maybe it hadn’t come up before.”

“Look, I literally just had this discussion with Eddie, can you two talk to each other?”

He groans. “Yeah, Stan, he told me, but—”

“So what are you bothering me for? Patty’s here, and it’s the last time we’re gonna be alone in my bachelor apartment for four days while you guys are over, so, like…” Air crackles down the line, and Richie can imagine Stan blowing his curly bangs off his face in a huff of impatience.

“Sorry, man,” Richie rushes to finish up, suddenly embarrassed. “I’m just being paranoid.”

“What’re you—” He stops. Softens. “Hey, don’t worry, okay? Patty’s awesome, I promise. And if she says anything—hell, if _I_ say anything that’s not cool about you guys being gay, then just let me know.”

He cringes, because as a kid he’d made more off-colour Jewish jokes than he should’ve been allowed to get away with, and it wasn’t until high school when some other kid made a similar joke and Stan went off on _that_ guy did Richie realize he was being shitty. They’d talked about it back then, and Stan had joked that he didn’t listen to half of what Richie said anyway, but he knew that wasn’t quite true. So Stan’s unwavering support now feels kind of undeserved.

“I’m not worried about _you_ , Stan,” Richie says, picking at a stray thread on his shorts. “And I’m sure Patty’s great, I just don’t know her, so…”

“I know,” he says. “But that’s why _I’m_ the one that’s supposed to be nervous. Patty hasn’t met anyone yet—she still needs Loser approval.”

And Richie is suddenly determined to love Patty no matter what. “Hey, I trust your judgement the most, Staniel. I can’t wait to meet her.”

When they arrive at Stan’s door, Richie and Eddie are bickering about how many pairs of underwear Richie brought and whether it’s enough (“I can always flip them inside out.” “No, you can’t! Who fucking raised you!”).

They’re still getting used to being around people as a known couple. They’d hung out with Colby and his friends a few times when Richie visited Eddie at college, and they had no idea how to act—what they were allowed to say to each other, whether they should hold hands, or even look at each other too long. So they end up regressing to fucking around like when they were kids.

Stan is as resigned as ever. They should be trying to make a good impression on Patty, which Richie tries to take into account.

Their hosts have already got snacks out for their guests, like real adults—Patty’s influence, Richie’s sure. He and Eddie are eating salsa and chips out of one of Patty’s handmade bowls while Stan proudly shows off the collection of her pottery lining his kitchen shelves. She’s nodding along, proud of her handiwork as well. 

Autopilot kicks in, and Richie says, “All that practice with your hands must make Stan a real lucky guy in the sack.”

Eddie sighs. “Just ignore him—”

Patty turns away from looking fondly at Stan to stare at Richie with wide, scandalized eyes. “Excuse me? I’m saving myself for marriage.”

She looks offended down to her core, and Richie flashes back in horror to the two out of three of Stan’s high school relationships that ended because of Richie’s big, disgusting mouth. 

Patty rounds on Stan. “Stan, what kind of friends do you have?”

Richie and Eddie share a panicked look.

“I—no, I meant—I’m sorry,” Richie stutters. “I meant, like folding his sheets—”

“I’m not his maid!”

“Uh—”

And then Stan’s left eye brow twitches, and Patty’s lips twist, and they both burst out laughing.

Stan grabs her hip and hugs her from behind, burying his laughter in her curly hair. “Thank you, baby, god he deserves that—”

“You really weren’t kidding,” Patty says, mirth lighting her face. She says to Richie, “You’ve been here all of ten minutes, and already a sex joke. I don’t _know_ you, sir!” But she’s still laughing.

Which brings out Richie and Eddie’s relieved laughter.

“That was nothing,” Eddie says to her. “If you wanted him to slip up, just mention my mother—”

“Yeah, she loves when I slip it in her.” Richie gives a shit-eating grin to the group at large, and another peal of Patty’s laughter fills the kitchen.

“Don’t encourage him!” Stan and Eddie warn in tandem.

Later on, they’ve settled comfortably across the threadbare couches in Stan’s living area. They’re about five feet from his bed in this bachelor apartment, and Richie has valiantly restrained himself from making a joke about being where the magic happens.

Stan and Patty are squished into a love seat so Richie and Eddie can have the couch. Instead of that, Richie’s sitting on the floor at the coffee table flipping through one of Stan’s birds of the world books. Eddie’s hand or foot brushes his shoulder every once in a while, but they’re not touching. They still don’t know how to act.

“Something that’s not too crowded,” Eddie is saying. They’re discussing what they should do tomorrow.

“Stanny says you’re into comedy,” Patty says to Richie.

Richie lights up. “Stanny?”

The man in question groans. “I do not consent to that name. I’ve never consented to any nickname in my life.”

Patty grins cheekily and twists one of his curls. “Not even Big Dick Uris?”

Stan keeps his poker face but the tips of his ears glow bright red.

 _“Big Dick Uris?”_ Richie chokes out past his laugh.

“Something you haven’t told us, Stanley?” Eddie says. He looks downright gleeful to for once not be the one embarrassed by his significant other.

“I’ve told you exactly what’s pertinent to you and nothing more,” Stan says in clipped, no-nonsense tone. “Now, as Patty was saying, there’s a comedy club a few blocks away that might interest you more than the museums in the area?”

Richie wishes they’d stayed on the topic of Stan’s big dick.

Because his last experience at a comedy club… had not ended well. But how was he supposed to say no to that without sounding suspicious?

“What kind of museums?” Eddie prompts. Perhaps the frozen look on Richie’s face gave away where his mind went to.

“Art!” Patty announces with a sparkling grin. “I’d be happy to be a tour guide. If you don’t care about the history of the works, I can just take you to all the exhibits with nudity.”

“Tour guide Patty?” Richie latches onto the suggestion. “Sign me up!”

Stan tilts his head curiously, but doesn’t say anything.

So the next day they’re off to an art museum. True to her word, Patty guides them to all the nudity and otherwise silly artworks displayed in the place. Stan also tries to convince them to actually appreciate the artistry, but that only gets Eddie to point out every work with a bird in it and tell Stan that he didn’t know his friends were famous. 

They have about as much fun as uncultured dudes can have in an art museum.

They hit up the cafeteria, because Patty has a yearly pass and gets a discount. Richie’s got his arm around the back of Eddie’s chair where it’s comfortable.

“We still have time for the comedy club tonight if you want,” Stan says once they’re almost done eating. Patty’s excused herself to the washroom. Maybe Stan knew to wait to bring it up again until they were alone.

“Yeah, we could,” Richie says in a high pitched voice that doesn’t at all denote agreement.

“What’s up? You don’t wanna _hear_ jokes, you just wanna tell them?”

Richie and Eddie share a look. “Depends on the joke.” 

Stan offers a good guess pretty quick. “Did someone say something to you guys at a comedy club?”

“It’s just me, I had a bad experience the last time…” Richie pauses, letting the tension build. “You see, I had to do live improv for a grade.”

Stan waits for him to elaborate, then rolls his eyes.

Eddie shoots Richie a look, like _are you really gonna leave it like that?_

Richie relents. “Okay, I got called a cocksucker.” Stan chokes on his Snapple. “Which was deeply insensitive, considering I wasn’t even thinking about sucking cocks at the time.”

Stan coughs and manages, “When?”

“Last semester.” Richie tosses back his last potato chip, forcing a casualness he didn’t feel. “Probably shouldn’t have heckled the guy, but—you live and you learn, right?”

“You learned how not to get called a cocksucker?” Stan asks incredulously.

Richie snorts, but Eddie looks around nervously. “Guys, there are children here.”

“Yeah, Stan, watch your language.”

Patty sits back down. “Stan, why are you swearing? There are children here.”

He rolls his eyes.

“Do you know who’s performing?” Eddie asks her, pushing the conversation in a productive direction. “Like, is it old straight guys, or...?”

“Perish the fucking thought,” Patty replies. “No, people from my program are going, they’ve see a few of the comics before, they vouched that they’re good. Are we thinking we need a laugh?”

Eddie lifts a brow at Richie.

“We don’t have to,” Stan says.

Patty looks between the three of them. “Did I miss something? You wanna go into comedy, right?”

And Richie does. He does wanna go into comedy. So this aversion to comedy clubs is both inconvenient and stupid.

“Yeah,” Richie decides. “Yeah, we should go tonight. I wanna meet all of Patty’s hot friends.”

Eddie cocks his head at him, expression flat. “What the fuck do you get out of that joke, Rich?”

Some woman walking past with a toddler shoots him a dirty look.

The rest of them burst into obnoxious laughter, and Richie squeezes Eddie’s knee under the table until he smiles too.

The comics are funny. The drinks are cheap. Richie keeps his mouth shut except to laugh, and they’re having a good time.

Stan has his arm wrapped around Patty’s shoulders, and she’s leaning against his side instead of her chair. The only way Richie and Eddie touched was Eddie tapping his foot against Richie’s under the table when the first comic got on stage. Richie was on his first beer then.

He’s on his third now, and he’s laughing at shit that isn’t funny. _He_ thinks it’s funny, but since no one else laughed, he can assume it’s not.

Maybe the comic knows it too because he points at Richie and goes, “This guy knows what I’m talking about!”

Beside him, Eddie freezes. It takes Richie himself a second to realize they’re not being attacked, after which he replies with a belated, “Whoo!”

“You out with your girlfriend tonight?”

Stan’s at the bar. On the other side of Richie from Eddie, Patty snorts into her hand. It was a 50/50 shot for the comic.

“No, I’m here with my—” Richie nearly chokes on his tongue, mouth moving faster than his brain, and Eddie shoots him a startled look. He changes route. “—friends.”

“Good, live comedy’s a shitty date idea. Thanks for coming out, guys!”

The guy goes back into his set and Richie’s heart rate slowly returns to normal.

“I’m getting another drink,” Richie announces between acts. 

Eddie grabs his forearm. “Maybe no.”

He pouts. “But I’m thirsty.”

He slides his glass to him. 

Richie takes a sip and frowns. “Is this just coke?”

“Yeah.”

And then Richie feels bad about drinking. As soon as they’d arrived, he was drawn to the bar like a magnet. Some of the audience is smoking and Eddie keeps coughing pointedly, but Richie has to stop himself from asking to bum a cigarette.

Eddie won’t kiss him when he tastes like an ashtray. It’s been an effective quitting tactic so far, but Richie’s restless cooped up like this. It’s another basement club, and nothing’s happened to him; he wants to calm down, but he can’t. Another drink might help. A smoke could, too.

Eddie draws Richie’s hand under the table and squeezes. It’s dark, and they’re in the corner and no one can see them, but it still feels wildly reckless. Sparks surge in Richie’s chest, at how much braver Eddie is than him. Always has been.

God, he wants to kiss him. Wants to drape his limbs over him and whisper better jokes in his ear than what’s getting said on stage. He wants to do that here, but he can’t, so he wants to go back to Stan’s.

“Can we—how many comics are left?” Richie asks.

Stan turns his head as he sips his white wine, and then gives Richie a good look over. “You wanna get out of here, Rich?”

His mouth is dry. “Could we?”

He hates that he can’t finish out the show, he hates that Eddie’s hand feels like fire in his, he hates—whatever feeling is gurgling in his chest. 

“Do you need a water or something before we go?” Patty asks, concerned.

“Make it a tonic water and add some vodka—”

“No, he doesn’t,” Eddie answers for him, already standing.

Richie stuffs his now-empty hand in his shorts pockets as they head out. 

Eddie walks close enough for their elbows to brush, looking up at Richie every couple minutes with a telltale furrow between his brows. Patty’s filling the silence since Richie’s not. Her and Stan are swinging their entwined hands as they walk ahead of them.

The last time Richie noogied Eddie while they were walking down the street, Eddie had grabbed his shirt and pulled him close, close enough for a kiss as they grinned at each other, lost in their own little world. Then a car honked and they’d leapt apart like they were on fire. There was no way to know if the honk was directed at them or not, but instincts from growing up in Derry for nearly two decades don’t just disappear. Nor should they, not about this.

They’re a block away from where they’re dropping Patty off—her apartment, or her friend’s apartment or something—when the fizzing tension in Richie’s chest pops and he blurts, “I’m jealous.”

The others turn to face him with varying levels of confusion.

“Of…?” Stan prompts, popping an eyebrow.

“You guys get to hold hands.” It’s almost a whine.

Stan frowns, looks at the hand he’s linked with his girlfriend, looks at Richie and Eddie’s hands, nowhere near each other other, and then yanks his hand away from Patty.

Selfishly, it makes Richie feels a bit better.

“No, you can still…” Eddie trails off, gesturing between the two of them.

“No, I uh…” Stan scratches the back of his neck. He shares a glance with Patty, who shrugs uncomfortably.

Shit, Richie had made things awkward. Obviously—what else would that particular announcement have done?

“Fuck, nevermind.” Richie shakes his head, bangs falling in front his glasses. “I’m drunk.”

 _“Are_ you?” Patty asks doubtfully, while Stan and Eddie know without having to ask that three cheap beers isn’t enough to get him drunk. Blaming accidental vulnerability on alcohol only works if the people he’s trying to get to shrug it off don’t know him.

“I mean,” Stan starts, “you guys were all over each other before you were dating. What’s the—I mean obviously there’s a difference, but you can do _something_ , right?”

“I can’t announce I’m out with my boyfriend to a roomful of strangers,” Richie replies. 

Well, he _could_ , but it would be stupid. Dangerous.

“Rich,” he says quietly. He fists his hand in the back of Richie’s shirt. “I know. Let’s just get back to Stan’s, okay?”

His eyes are big in the dark, round face illuminated by the amber streetlights. They hadn’t talked much about touching less in public—what was there to say? _Isn’t it unfair? Doesn’t it suck? Can you even breathe properly thinking about kissing in the middle of the street where anyone could see?_

They’re out of Derry, but that only drops the likelihood of getting beat up for PDA from 100% to like 80%. If they’re being generous.

Eddie loops his arm through Richie’s for the rest of the walk, which eases the tension he’s holding in his shoulders just a little.

They drop Patty off, and she hugs them all, and gives Stan a kiss on the cheek.

Richie toes at a crack in the sidewalk. He says to her, “Hey, I promise I won’t be as whiny tomorrow. You’ll be around, right?” 

Patty raises her brows. “If you want me intruding on all your precious Stanley time, sure.”

“Oh, next time we’re in town we won’t even tell Stan we’re coming,” Eddie says. “We’ll just come to bother you.”

Stan bites down on a smile, and Patty nods with a laugh. “Then I’ll be back tomorrow. We can stay in, if you want. I’ve got a killer board game collection, I’ll bring some over.”

Stan never had to worry, Richie fucking _loves_ Patty.

When they get back to Stan’s, Richie flops onto the couch and tugs Eddie onto his lap, sitting him sideways across his thighs so his back’s against the armrest. Richie hugs him tight to fill the stupid emptiness that had been growing since he’d choked on his tongue back at the club.

Eddie loops his fingers through Richie’s and kisses them, tangling the two of them up together just like Richie’s wanted all day. 

“I love you,” Eddie whispers in his ear, like it’s a special secret just for Richie. It plants a soothing warmth deep inside his chest. 

Stan joins them to deliver a glass of water to Richie. Richie says, “Hey Stan, did you know Spaghetti loves me?”

“No,” he says sarcastically. “What’s next? Let me guess, you love him too?”

“Oh my god,” Richie says with a lapful of Eddie. “How did you know?”

Stan puts his hands on his hips. “Do I need to be here for this?”

“Yes,” they both reply like it’s obvious. Not like he’d have anywhere to go, anyway.

Richie doesn’t miss the pleased tug of Stan’s lips as he takes the other end of the couch. He stretches out until his socked feet hit Richie’s thigh, and leaves them there.

“So,” Stan begins.

“Does Patty like us?” Richie asks instead of whatever conversation Stan was going to start.

Eddie nods eagerly in support of the question.

Stan rolls his eyes. “Yes, she likes you.”

And he’d never spare their feelings with a lie, so Richie knows he’s telling the truth.

“Sorry if I made it weird,” Richie says.

Stan folds his hands neatly in his lap and neither shakes his head nor nods, just inclines his head for Richie to speak.

“It’s just—it’s not fair,” Richie says, adjusting his hold on Eddie as a nervous fidget. “That’s about it.”

Not fair that he’s still scared of everyday societal bullshit after defeating a killer clown in his tweens.

Eddie scritches his fingers across his scalp and Richie hums.

“Like—” Richie says, “—like some guy can yell bigoted shit all over the place and know that he’ll get home safe and sound, but I say I have a boyfriend instead of a girlfriend, and the world could implode.” He pokes Eddie’s cheek. “You know how hard it is for me to shut up about you?”

A smile blooms across his face. “I know, Rich. I was impressed by your restraint.”

Richie pouts. “I shouldn’t have to be restrained.”

“Yeah,” he sighs, smoothing a hand down the back of his neck.

“You just can’t let people like that rule your life,” Stan says, tapping his foot against Richie’s leg. “I know it’s different, but you know how many antisemitic assholes have tried to make me feel like shit? Fuck ‘em. Like, be safe, but—live your life. Be proud.”

Richie’s face heats, and if anyone comments on the way his voice cracks, he’ll blame it on the booze. “Thanks, Big Dick Uris. If we’re ever looking for a third, we know who to call—”

Stan scoffs and smacks Richie in the head with a handmade pillow.

Despite it being a bachelor pad, Richie’s noticing that Stan’s apartment is filled with Patty. Besides the wealth of pictures of the both of them, there’s the multimedia art project she’s got going in the corner, the patchwork throw pillows that definitely weren’t Stan’s pick, and the extra toothbrush in the bathroom.

“Dude, is she living here?” Richie asks Stan after they pause boardgames to get dinner going. She hasn’t been staying the night, but that’s maybe only because it would feel weird if all four of them shared the same room to sleep.

Stan’s thumbed through three of her art binders on his bookshelf before he finds the photo album of birds he wants to show Richie. Across the room, Patty demonstrates to Eddie how to squeeze potatoes through a cheesecloth for the latkes they’re making.

“Not if our parents ask,” Stan replies coyly.

“Ooh, the Rabbi and Mrs. Uris don’t approve of all the wild pre-marital sex you’ve been having?”

His lips pull into a smirk before he bites it down. “Shut up. You’re so lucky your parents don’t know you’re in a relationship.”

Of course, it’s less luck than some mix of defiance, shame, and fear, but Richie says, “Hey, next time I see my dad I’m coming out. Can’t wait to see the look on his face when I tell him I’m gonna be sucking dick.”

“Quit talking about my dick!” Eddie calls from across the room.

“Why?” Richie asks. “It’s so pretty.”

“You haven’t even—” He cuts himself off, cheeks red.

But Richie _has_ seen it. In passing. He has not sucked it, or even touched it yet. He still knows it’s pretty.

“You taking it slow?” Stan asks Richie, by which he means ‘Eddie’s still Eddie with that stuff, huh?’

Richie claps him on the back and guides him to the kitchen, since Eddie and Patty are looking their way anyway. “Our young love is still burgeoning, Staniel. It needs time to flourish and grow.”

Eddie’s glaring daggers at Richie. “Also it’s kind of personal.”

“Also it’s kind of personal,” Richie agrees, patting Stan on the chest. “Weird that you’d bring it up.”

Stan shoots him a flat look then says to Eddie, “Yeah, I wouldn’t wanna suck this guy’s dick, either.”

“What part of ‘it’s kind of personal’ is no one getting?” Eddie demands.

“Stanley,” Patty chastises. “That’s not very supportive.”

“I’d suck _Eddie’s_ dick,” Stan offers. “I’m sure it’s much cleaner.”

Richie shoves his shoulder. “Fuck you, dude, I wash my dick.”

“You ever wish real hard for a bolt of lightning to strike you down, but it doesn’t?” Eddie muses. “That’s how I know god’s not real.”

“Aw.” Richie wraps him in a hug despite his protests. When he finally gives in, Richie’s hugging him from behind, and he plants a wet kiss on Eddie’s cheek. “God’s not gonna let my boyfriend die a virgin, babe.”

Eddie elbows him in the stomach so hard he almost throws up.

They’re saying their goodbyes the next morning, and Richie’s trying to shove all his dirty clothes into his backpack. Eddie’s easily-zipped suitcase mocks him from the floor.

“So?” Stan joins him, brows raised. “Patty get your seal of approval?”

He rolls his eyes. “Dude, she had it as soon as I heard how happy you were talking about her.”

Stan grins and casts a glance at Patty gifting Eddie some cute pottery mugs out of Stan’s collection.

“Honestly, she’s too good for you,” Richie jokes, yanking at his bag’s zipper.

“Really?” Stan asks, looking every bit the lovesick fool as he watches her. “I think she’s kind of perfect for me.”

Richie tries and fails not to look at Eddie just the same. He winks at Stan. “I call best man. I don’t care what Bill says.”

He drags his attention back to Richie. “Only if I get to be yours.”

Richie snorts a chuckle. “You get some laws passed, you got yourself a deal.”

“Oh shit, right.”

“Dumbass.” He stands, slinging his backpack full to bursting over his shoulder.

“Shut up and go home so I can fuck my girlfriend.”

Richie laughs and yanks him into a hug. “I’ll miss you too, Stan.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Me: I'm gonna write fluff!  
> Character: what about these societal prejudices that affect my relationship and have no clear answers or real resolutions?  
> Me: 🙃  
> Uh yeah, so I've had most of this fic written for a few months, but the comedy club thing I threw together in the past two weeks because I'd realized I'd given Richie (the future stand up comedian??) a reason to be averse to comedy clubs in Kisses Taste Like Mint and I was like... shit. Better address that.  
> Anyway, thanks for reading! How'd you like Stan and Patty? I had a lot of fun writing them.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hiii my workplace is still open for some reason, so I haven't had free time but I've still had the stress, so I didn't get a chance to work on this chapter during the week like usual, so I had to polish this off all this weekend and I'm sick of looking at it!! It's good though, it's a fun chapter (with little sense of narrative flow, but that's why I keep calling everything a vignette).  
> It's also the reason this fic is rated E, so the tags have been updated.  
> Please enjoy!

When they get back to New York, their summer jobs start. Eddie’s interning at some snooze-fest of an office job (“I’m learning a lot of transferable skills, Richie!”) and Richie snags a server gig at one of those terrible singing restaurants. The fact that Richie can’t sing didn’t come up in the interview, and he’s the only employee there who doesn’t dream of being on Broadway, but far from the only gay one.

Once he’s working, it’s more of a chore to pick up after himself around the house, because he’s tired and lazy to start with, and where does the time go? But he tries his best. And he still cooks.

Richie would never call himself a master of the culinary arts, but compared to Eddie, he’s Emeril. Growing up with absent and absent-minded parents meant Richie had a rudimentary understanding of how to cook for himself, and living in student housing only made him more resourceful. He could do wonders with just eggs, cheese and any sort of carb when his budget was stretched too thin to order takeout for the fifth day in a row.

Eddie on the other hand, hadn’t been allowed near a stove his entire childhood—though it wasn’t like his mother had any cooking skills to impart anyway. In the dorms, he either ate at the dining hall or made oatmeal in the microwave.

So, as promised, Richie rolls up his sleeves and does his best in the kitchen whenever he can.

Eddie seems to like his cooking, when it’s not burnt or tremendously over salted. He’s especially a fan of Richie’s stir fry, which is just frozen vegetables heated up in Lucas’ dented wok, tossed with chicken and sweet and sour sauce on top of minute rice. Richie always makes enough for Eddie’s lunch the next day, packed in the house’s only unbroken Tupperware container. If there are no leftovers, Richie usually leaves a sandwich in the fridge for Eddie to take.

“You don’t have to do this,” Eddie says the third morning in a row RIchie’s left a Saran-wrapped sandwich with a cute note on it in the fridge.

“What are you eating if I don’t pack you a lunch?” Richie tilts his head back to look at him from the couch. He’s got work in two hours, so he could still be in bed, but he keeps oversleeping when he doesn’t wake up when Eddie does. He might still end up napping on the couch.

Eddie ducks his head and mumbles, “A sandwich from the deli across the street from my office.”

Richie splays his hands, like he’s made his point.

“Can you at least stop with the notes? The guys at work keep asking if my mom makes my lunch.”

“Your mom never made your lunch. She was too busy with me eating her—”

He shoots him a glare, shoving the sandwich into his lunch bag. “I love you, Richie, but I will kill you.”

Eddie heads for the front door, and Richie makes obnoxious kissy noises from the couch. Eddie detours to kiss him quick before he leaves for work.

They’re washing dishes together—like real adults. They’d gone on an extended afternoon stroll to try to avoid them, but they’d come back and the sink was somehow just as full as when they’d left.

“You thought I wouldn’t wanna blow you? Like, _ever?”_ Eddie asks incredulously. “Shit, you must really love me.”

It’s part of an ongoing conversation about what they’re cool with in the bedroom (or the couch, or the kitchen counter—wherever they end up). Years of Richie whining about sex may have given Eddie the impression that he had a voracious appetite for sexy times, but all Richie wants is to make Eddie feel good. Mind-blowingly good. Which means knowing what would make Eddie uncomfortable or grossed-out, so that Richie doesn’t joke about it when they’re trying to get off. 

They’ve been discussing what they’re down for currently, what they’re looking forward to later on, the maybes, and definitely no’s.

Eddie has a lot less no’s than Richie was expecting.

Richie snorts. “I seem to recall you saying that the human body was designed all wrong, with the reproductive and waste disposal systems all tied up together.”

“When did I say that?” Eddie asks.

“High school.”

“I was like seventeen, Rich.”

“So your tastes have changed? You’ve got a taste for dick?”

The cup Eddie’s washing slips from his fingers, splashing soapy water up at him. He sends him an unimpressed look and says, “Well, I’m dating _you_ , aren’t I?”

“Are you saying I am a dick, or just that you like my dick?” Richie retorts.

“The first one for sure.” He rinses the cup again and hands it to Richie. “Guess I’ll find out about the second one.”

He pops his brows with a lewd grin. “Can’t wait.”

Richie’s putting the cup on the drying rack when Eddie adds quietly, “With condoms, though.”

“Of course,” Richie agrees.

“Yeah?” He looks relieved.

He knocks shoulders with him. “Yeah. C’mon, I know my baby.”

He sours. “Don’t call me that.”

“ _Always be my baby_ ,” Richie sings until Eddie smacks him with a dish towel, and then they’re both laughing. 

Not that Eddie expected him to, but Richie doesn’t stop writing notes in his lunches, which range from hearts around Eddie’s name to a doodle of a robot fighting Godzilla, to a jokey note wishing him luck on a meeting. Eddie doesn’t do anything in these meetings except take notes, but he appreciates the sentiment because it is a chore to stay awake for them sometimes. 

It’s weird, being this domestic. Leaving for work in a suit, kissing Richie goodbye. Kissing Richie hello if Richie’s home when he gets back. Racing to the door as soon as he hears it open if Richie gets home after him. 

Eddie never thought he’d have this easy domesticity—at least he never thought he’d _like_ it. Because he never thought it could be with Richie. No matter how deep he shoved his thoughts and feelings and tried to imagine a future with some nice woman he’d call his wife, it was always someone more like Richie lingering at the back of his mind.

So he feels lucky as shit, and brags about it to Ben on the phone all the time, and Mike a little too, because they’ll focus on support and keep any teasing to a minimum, while the other losers will razz him mercilessly (lovingly of course, but they’d still tear him to shreds).

Eddie wants to rub his happiness in the face of the world, including the other interns at his office. But they’re always talking about girls, and going out clubbing to pick up _girls_. 

Which is why he should’ve seen that day’s lunch conversation coming from a mile away.

When Eddie gets home after, he’s ready to word-vomit in the five minutes before Richie leaves for work—only to find an empty house, suggesting that Richie’s actually left on time for once.

Which Eddie had been telling him to do since he got the fucking job, but really? Today’s the day he takes Eddie’s advice?

It takes him no time at all to decide to stop by the diner Richie works at instead of waiting for him to come home. He’s kind of hungry. And a lot impatient.

He’s been there a few times, so he makes sure to get seated in Richie’s section.

He has to wait to be served, since the waitstaff is finishing up a rousing rendition of ‘Hello Dolly!’. Richie spins and ducks under a fellow waiter’s arm in a choreographed fashion and drops off two milkshakes at a neighbouring booth. He belts out the final line, voice warbling. He looks ridiculous in his polyester uniform, bright red with white piping, topped with a folded white hat. The giggling college girls he’s serving don’t seem to mind.

Richie’s face lights up when he sees Eddie, which is nothing new but makes Eddie’s stomach flip all the same.

“Well hello, stranger who I have never met before,” Richie greets. He clicks his pen a few times, holding his notepad at the ready. “You look like you want a root beer float.”

“The guys at work think I have a girlfriend,” Eddie blurts, hands folded tightly atop the formica tabletop. 

Without missing a beat Richie says, “What’s her name?”

“Ramona.”

“Ramona?” Richie laughs. He perches his chin on his hand. “Do you think I’d make a pretty Ramona?”

“No.”

“Liar.”

“It was the fucking lunch notes!” Eddie snaps open the plastic menu and acts like he’s asking Richie a question about it so he doesn’t get whisked away to do his actual job.

“Oh, because you already told them your mom hadn’t written them?”

The casualness with which Richie’s responding only riles Eddie up more.

“I told you to stop writing those notes,” Eddie hisses. It’s loud enough in the restaurant that it would be a miracle if anyone overheard them, but he’s still keeping his voice down. “Now they think I have a _girlfriend.”_

“Because you _told_ them you did?” It’s less of a question and more of an amused statement. “You gave her a name and everything.”

“Well what was I supposed to do?”

That’s what this all comes down to. What _should_ he have done? The guys at work asked if he had a girlfriend packing his lunches, and he hadn’t even had the split-second instinct to correct them like Richie had at the comedy club. Eddie had jumped at the safety of the misunderstanding.

“Exactly.” Richie tilts his head. “Eds? What else would you have done?”

“Told the truth,” he mutters.

“Why?”

Eddie huffs and crosses his arms, leaning back in the booth. “Because I’m not ashamed of you.”

Richie’s expression shifts from gently mocking to just gentle. “I know, babe. But it’s like what we talked about at Stan’s—”

“Table five!” the cook shouts from the kitchen. “Order up!”

Richie throws a look over his shoulder. “That’s mine. Sit tight, okay? I’ll be right back with your root beer float.”

So Eddie waits, knee bouncing under the table. He feels a bit better that Richie had absolutely no expectation that he’d tell the truth, but he’s still got this ugly pit growing in his stomach. 

It might’ve been fine. It’s New York, he keeps reminding himself, not Derry. But that doesn’t help when he reads the newspaper and foolishly keeps up to date on hate crime statistics at the library.

Plus, there’s the inevitable question that would come after the reveal he’s dating a guy— _’wait, so you’re gay?’_ And Eddie still doesn’t have an answer to that. 

It’s not that he thinks he likes girls; he’s not bi like Colby. But every time he thinks he could maybe come to terms with it, he sees his mom’s sneer, feels Bowers’ punches, hears a rasping leper offering him a dime. 

Richie’s so fucking brave for believing in who he is.

Richie returns with a nearly overflowing root beer float. He sets it in front of Eddie with a flourish, and then produces his notepad to pretend to take the rest of his order.

“So what’s up, Eds?” Richie asks softly.

Eddie plucks the maraschino cherry off the scoop of ice cream in his glass and chews on it while he decides on what he’d rushed over here to say.

“Lying about you made me feel like a scared little kid. Like when I lied to my mom about where I was going or who I was with,” Eddie admits. “There was nothing wrong with what I was doing back then either, but I knew I’d get in shit if I was honest.” 

“You’re right, though,” Richie says. “You’re not doing anything wrong. Ever.”

He lifts a brow. “Ever?”

He nods, a smile tugging at his lips. “You can do no wrong, Spaghetti-love. Just ‘cause you’re not talking about me to boring office bros doesn’t mean you love me any less.”

Eddie sets his chin on his palm and tries not to look haplessly in love with the waiter. It’s moments like these that make him feel like a kid in a good way, like he’s about to fill notebooks with hearts doodled around his and Richie’s names. It reminds him of all the times that Richie talked him down from a panic attack just by holding his hand and talking to him, because Richie’s presence was enough to calm the majority of his fears.

Richie continues, “I’m not out at work either, and I never stop thinking about you.” 

The giggling booth of young women in front of Eddie wave at Richie for his attention. “I found the song I wanted!” one of them says.

Richie sends her a winning grin. “I’ll be right with you.” He turns back to Eddie saying, “You good, though?” 

“Uh huh.” He wants—he wants to whisk Richie home (like he always wants) but other than that, he’s good. 

Richie seems to read his mind. He pops his brows. “I can show you exactly how little anybody else knowing about us matters when we get home.”

“Don’t you have a job to do?”

“Yeah.” He taps Eddie’s menu with his pen. “Cheeseburger and fries?”

“No pickles,” Eddie reminds him, even though Richie knows.

“Weirdo.” He ruffles his hair before heading to the waiting table.

He takes their request and then goes off to wrangle up a few other waitstaff to embarrass themselves in front of dozens of people and completely enjoy it. Eddie does not understand musical theatre.

“Hey.” One of the girls Richie was serving leans over the booth to talk to Eddie. “Do you know that guy?”

She points at Richie, and Eddie nods.

“Is he single?”

Not even a little bit.

And they don’t need the details, they don’t need to know who he’s seeing, or how head over heels the both of them are. All they need to know is that Richie is so, so taken.

So Eddie says, “No.”

And sucks down his root beer float to hide his smirk.

Real work is a fucking drag, because it cuts down on Eddie time, first of all. Second of all, it’s exhausting running around a restaurant singing and dancing for minimum wage. 

So one night Eddie, kind and loving boyfriend that he is, offers Richie a massage. Has Eddie ever given one? Does he know what he’s doing? No and no, but Richie sure does appreciate the feeling of Eddie sitting on his thighs and working out the kinks in his back. Richie can’t help but do his best to give it a happy ending as quick as possible, though.

And Eddie, kind and horny boyfriend that he is, gives in enthusiastically. 

They’re shirtless and sitting up on the bed sharing open-mouthed, messy kisses. Eddie straddles Richie’s thigh and Richie keeps peeking at Eddie’s clear bulge, eyes drawn down like gravity. 

He’s palmed him before, through shorts or sweatpants, but all he’s got on now is his underwear and a pair of Richie’s pajama pants he’d grown out of that Eddie cut short because he wanted more “house shorts”. The fabric’s worn, so thin that Richie can see the outline of his hard length like it was right in front of him.

“Richie.” Eddie kisses his ear and tugs Richie’s hand to his knee.

And Richie fucking loves that Eddie tells him just what he wants.

He smooths his hand up Eddie’s muscled thigh, passing from warm skin to Pacman-themed pajamas. Eddie jerks forward impatiently as Richie moves closer. He lays his hand down soft, the heat of Eddie radiating against his skin. 

Eddie hums, rolling his hips up into Richie’s palm. He adjusts his knee that’s between Richie’s legs so it fits snugly against Richie’s crotch. 

Richie squeezes reflexively from the sensation, and Eddie _groans,_ tightening his arms draped over Richie’s shoulders.

Richie buries his face in his neck as Eddie keeps shifting, sending thrums of pleasure through him. “Shit, you feel so good, Eds.”

Eddie nod, humming. “Uh huh.”

He loses most of his words when Richie touches him like this. He wonders what sounds he could get from him without pajamas in the way.

“Eddie,” Richie breathes into his ear, pulling his hand back just a little.

“Hey,” Eddie complains with a look down.

That should fill him with confidence, but he’s still nervous as he spreads his hand along Eddie’s inner thigh. “Babe, can I touch you? Do you want me to touch you?”

His breath stutters out in a whine. “I, um… oh, fuck.” His forehead drops to his bare shoulder. “You know what would be fun to do first?”

“Tell me.”

He hears the thud of his swallow next to his ear. “Get tested.”

“Tested?”

“Your school clinic is open year-round.”

It takes a second for Richie to process, because that’s a very different suggestion than he’d been expecting.

But, sure, they can do that. 

Richie could also say that they’re both virgins and he’s not sure what diseases you can get from hand stuff—but he just nods. 

He drags his hand down Eddie’s shaking thigh and kisses his temple. “Yeah, Eds.”

“Yeah?” He lifts his head, brows pulled together giving his forehead the little crease that has no place being there when they’re both sweaty and hard like this.

Richie catches his lips and mumbles over them, “We’ll make it a date.”

“Okay.” He clutches Richie’s bicep and tries to shift closer to his hand again. “We can finish what we were doing before though, like, over the clothes.”

Richie laughs. “Oh yeah, talk dirty to me.” 

He pushes him back on the bed as Richie moves to comply. “Shut up—oh, _god,_ Richie!”

They have a free Tuesday afternoon together, and they spend it at the campus clinic. It’s not busy, seeing as it’s the middle of summer, but there’s a few other people before them, so they sit down to wait while they fill out forms given to them by a scowling nurse.

Richie’s trying his best to act like bros instead of boyfriends, but it’s hard when they’re doing a very partner-y thing right now. Maybe the nurse can see through their ruse, or maybe she’s just being very judgy about two guys getting tested for STDs together.

Eddie peers over Richie’s shoulder like he’s cheating on a test. “Are you saying you’re sexually active?”

Richie blinks down at his form. “Uh, I guess. Just so they don’t get nosy and ask me why I’m getting tested when I haven’t done anything.”

He nods. Taps his pen on the clipboard in a staccato beat.

“Eddie—” Richie starts, knowing exactly where he’s going.

“You’re right, this is stupid.”

“No it isn’t,” he says firmly.

“We don’t have a sex life,” Eddie argues under his breath. “Dry humping isn’t sex. Why are we here except to humour my fucking neuroses?”

“To be smart and responsible, like real adults,” Richie whispered back. “I could have something, you don’t know.”

“You are a _virgin_.”

“Your mom would beg to differ,” he says on reflex. Eddie rolls his eyes with a huff. “Come on, this isn’t pointless. You can catch stuff from toilet seats, right?”

Eddie looks at him aghast. “Do you sit on public toilet seats?”

“Sometimes a dude’s gotta shit, Eds.”

Which might have Eddie rethinking their whole relationship, but at least he finishes filling out his form. And then Richie’s too, when he takes too long. 

He returns the forms to the nurse, and his foot’s tapping as soon as he sits back down.

The thing is, Eddie’s intimacy hangups have never been a question for Richie. Even when they were twelve—when Richie was the biggest shit head he ever was—he didn’t make fun of Eddie for needing to brush their teeth or use gum for them to kiss. It was one of the constants of the universe—two plus two equals four, the sky is blue, Eddie needs an extra step to feel comfortable getting up close and personal. 

He’d grown out of needing to brush their teeth to kiss, and maybe after this test he’ll stop worrying about catching STDs from a hand job, but until then or if he never does—Richie will do whatever he needs.

“This isn’t one of those tests where you need to jerk off, is it?” Richie muses.

“It’s not like I don’t trust you,” Eddie blurts at the same time.

Richie lifts a brow.

He sighs through his nose. “No, they don’t need you to jerk off.”

“Because I’m willing—”

“You know that, right?” Eddie’s annoyed, and stressed, and embarrassed, and probably halfway to hyperventilating. “You know it’s not you?”

“I know, babe,” Richie says seriously. “Can you—can you look at me?” He waits until Eddie’s wide eyes are on his. “I grew up watching you be terrified of catching everything from mono to AIDS—I’m happy to get this test done so you can be comfortable. This is not annoying. You’re not embarrassing. I love you,” he says, because he can never say it enough.

Eddie takes a deep breath, nodding. His hands are clenched in his lap. If he’d had the forethought to freak out at home, Richie could be holding his hands right now, but he doesn’t mention that.

“Okay,” Eddie says. “Okay, I hear you. Thank you.”

He picks up a magazine and flips through it, chewing on the inside of his lip. 

Richie wants to kiss him, but he can’t, so instead he leans in close and says, “Besides, whenever I get my hands and/or mouth on your dick, I don’t want you worrying about diseases—you shouldn’t be thinking about anything but _me_. Because nothing is gonna be sexier than seeing you lost in the throes of passion while I’m making you feel good enough to—”

A nurse stops in front of them. “Mr. Tozier?” 

“Hm?” He looks up at her nonchalantly while Eddie blushes furiously next to him.

She hands the clipboard back to him. “Can I get your legal name, please?”

Richie skims the sheet and laughs. He crosses out ‘Trashmouth’ and corrects it before handing it back to her. “Sorry, force of habit.”

As she walks away, Eddie glowers at him. “You’re _so_ paying for that.”

He bites down a groan. “Oh god, you promise?”

They both come back negative for anything, and though Richie assures Eddie that it doesn’t mean they _have_ to do anything if Eddie’s not ready—Eddie’s ready. (“I’m so tired of doing laundry with cum stains on it, Richie.”) And after last week, where they’d fallen out of Richie’s twin bed for the umpteenth time while fooling around, they’d finally dragged one of the empty beds into their room for a new mega bed. 

So they’re good to go.

Eddie showers first that night, and then Richie.

He showers the way he imagines Eddie does; thoroughly and with too much soap. He can’t help but think about Eddie as he runs his slick hands over his body. Eddie in the next room, Eddie who’d just used this shower, Eddie who would be the next person to touch him after Richie finishing washing his dick.

Could anybody blame him for getting to half mast all by himself?

By the time he towels himself off, he’s still hard, and he frowns at his boxers pooled on the floor, wondering at the manoeuvrability of the situation. He could just wrap the towel around his waist, but then he’d have to come back in here to hang it up, because he can’t leave damp towels crumpled up on the floor anymore.

“Eddie, darling?” He walks down the hall and pops his head into the bedroom, hiding the rest of his body from view.

Eddie looks up from arranging a dry towel on the bed. “What?”

“Do I _need_ to get dressed again?” Richie drops a wink. “Since we’re just gonna be taking it off?”

“Um…” He looks down at himself, wearing just a pair of boxer briefs. “I guess not.”

“Super!” Richie throws the door open and waltzes into the room with more bravado than he feels. 

Eddie’s gaze immediately zeroes in on Richie’s dick. He opens his mouth. Closes it. “Did you do that on purpose?”

“What?” He pops a cassette in the stereo and hits play. He’d been working on this playlist for months.

Eddie waves a hand at his erection.

“No, Eds, I was just thinking about you in the shower and it happened.” He stands at the edge of the bed. He’s not sure what to do with his hands, so he puts them on his hips.

Eddie’s cheeks flush. For long moment he keeps looking at Richie’s dick but then, as if he’s just noticed he’s staring, looks at Richie’s face before his wide eyes drop to the towel he’s fiddling with. “Do you think this towel’s big enough? I don’t want to make a mess of the sheets.”

“Don’t worry about the sheets, we can wash them.”

Eddie meets his gaze again with a glare. “ _I_ wash them.”

Richie joins Eddie on the bed and cups his chin, leaning forward. “As a special treat for you, Eddie my love, I’ll wash the sheets this time.”

And then their lips meet, and Eddie melts in his hand. Eddie takes his shoulders and squeezes—he has a thing for Richie’s shoulders, he really likes them for some reason. Richie’s not complaining.

Eddie drops a few more kisses before sitting back. His gaze drops down again. “You’re naked. We’re kissing and you’re naked.”

“Yeah?” They’re sitting across from each other, even though normally by now Richie would be straddling him. He doesn’t wanna throw more at Eddie than he can handle. Maybe they should’ve started off with something more familiar. “I can put some boxers on if you want—”

“No.” Eddie holds his shoulders tight to keep him in place. “It’s just… different kissing when you’re naked.”

Richie shivers as Eddie’s hands slip down his chest. His heart beats against Eddie’s palm. 

He’s right. 

Richie doesn’t feel vulnerable so much as… unweighted. Because all the love and adoration bursting from Richie is reflected clear as day in Eddie’s face. They’re here for each other. Nothing else in the whole world matters.

“Do you like it?” Richie asks.

His hands drop lower. “Uh huh.”

Richie feels like he’s been waiting his whole life for this moment, for Eddie Kaspbrak to touch his dick. 

He considers telling him that, but then Eddie’s kissing him again, just as softly as he lays his fingers on his dick. Richie moans against Eddie’s lips, like Eddie’s drawing the breath right out of him.

Eddie leans his forehead against Richie’s, warm breath washing over his face, lashes fanned across his cheeks as he watches Richie grow to full hardness in his hand. “Holy shit. I’m touching your dick.”

“You are,” he says just as wondrously. 

Eddie’s fingers trail over his length, not purposely teasing but managing it anyway. 

Richie sneaks a peek at the bedside table for the lube, but beside it spots a condom. For what?

Eddie turns his head and sits back, blushing furiously but meeting Richie’s eye. “You said… about your mouth, before… Do you wanna, put your—do you wanna give—”

“Do I wanna suck your dick?” Richie asks, excitement making his breath hitch.

He rolls his eyes. “If that’s how we’re saying it.”

“Blow job?” Richie kisses all over his face as he offers suggestions. “Suck you off? Put your cock in my mouth?”

“Richie!” he scolds, but he’s tugging off his underwear all the same. “Yes, _that_ , any of that.”

“All of that.” 

He pushes Eddie back on the pillows once he’s naked, and he means to immediately kiss him and grab the condom before going to town, but he’s caught by the sight of Eddie beneath him. His eyes are impossibly big, pupils wide and trained on Richie. A pink blush spreads down his chest, leading down to his happy trail where his erection stands proudly against his stomach. God, he looks good.

“Hey, I was right,” Richie says dumbly.

“Huh?”

“You do have a pretty dick.”

Richie gives an experimental squeeze before Eddie gets the chance to respond. His hips buck into his fist, which is the hottest thing Richie’s ever experienced. He thinks maybe everything tonight will be the hottest thing he’s ever experienced.

“Fuck.” Eddie bites his lip, watching Richie slowly stroke him. “Your hand’s so much bigger than mine.”

Richie’s voice cracks. “That’s not the only—”

“Yeah, I know, your mouth is huge,” Eddie cuts him off shakily. “You wanna put the condom on now?”

Richie grabs the foil and fumbles to open it. All his blood has raced to one specific part of him, and his fine motor skills seem to have taken a hit for it. He finally manages to rip it open and starts to put it on.

“Pinch the tip,” Eddie mutters while Richie’s already doing so.

“Yeah, yeah. We both had the same clubhouse sex ed.”

Eddie laughs a little.

Richie strokes down once to make sure it’s on right, and another stroke just for fun. “How’s that feel? Feel good? Feel right?”

“It feels so right, Rich,” he says lowly.

The meaning of it all overwhelms him like a punch to the gut. “I just meant the condom…”

Eddie draws him in by the back of the neck and kisses him slow and deep. He thumbs along his cheekbone and says, “I’m really glad it’s us doing this, Rich. You and me.”

“You and me,” he repeats, because he can’t think of anything more right than that.

“I love you,” Eddie says.

“Love you more.” Richie kisses down his throat to his chest.

He snorts. “Doubt it.”

Richie’s smiling by the time he reaches Eddie’s dick. He regards it for a moment, not sure quite where to start. He decides he wants to kiss it.

He drops a kiss at the base, and then just above, and goes up that way until he reaches the head, going ‘mwah!’ the whole way.

Eddie laughs and covers his red face with his arm. “Richie!”

“Uh huh?” He licks a stripe up where he’d just kissed. “Comments, questions, concerns?”

“So many concerns.” He pushes Richie’s bangs out of his eyes and then winds his fingers through Richie’s hair.

Richie hums, sucking the tip into his mouth.

“Oh, _Richie_.” Eddie says his name in the chest-deep way he does when Richie gets a gentle hand around him over his sweatpants and Eddie clings to his shoulders like he’s never letting him go. It makes Richie ache between his legs.

He ducks his head lower, hoping for more sounds to make him ache. Eddie feels solid and hot and so fucking good on Richie’s tongue. Stretching his jaw and pulling at his hair. He never wants to stop.

Eddie moans like there’s nothing on his mind save for the feel of Richie’s mouth on him, and it’s a fight to not come before Eddie’s had a chance to really touch him.

“Fuck.” Richie pulls off with a grunt. He drops the hand that’s not holding Eddie’s inner thigh to his own dick. He wraps it around the base in an attempt to keep from going off right there.

“Hey, what’re you doing?” Eddie pants, leaning up on his elbows.

“Trying not to come.” His cheek brushes Eddie’s dick.

 _“You’re_ trying not to come?” he asks incredulously.

“Are you hearing yourself?”

“Are you _seeing_ yourself?” Eddie retorts. He tentatively touches Richie’s bottom lip, swollen and spit-slick. His voice cracks when he says, “Jesus, Richie.”

He kisses his fingers, and Eddie somehow blushes even harder.

“You want me to keep blowing you, or do you need a second?”

Eddie’s grip in Richie’s hair tightens. “No, yeah, keep going. It feels…”

Richie’s eyes flutter shut as he drags his lips up Eddie’s shaft. “Yeah?”

“So good,” he whispers. Richie dips back down, shallowly taking him in as he hums for Eddie to continue. He lets out, “You feel so fucking good, Richie.”

Richie thinks maybe he blacks out.

The next thing he knows, Eddie’s tensing, and the condom’s filling, and he’s groaning Richie’s name, long and low.

“Oh god,” Eddie sighs. His chest heaves. “I love you so much, holy shit.”

“You’re just saying that because I gave you your first blow job.”

“Shut up.” He tugs on his hair. “Shut up and kiss me, kiss me, ki—”

Richie obliges, stretching up his body to slide his tongue into Eddie’s mouth and swallowing all the sweet sounds Eddie offers him.

“Wanna touch you,” Eddie mumbles.

Richie says, “Please.”

Eddie gets them flipped over, Richie on his back as Eddie tosses the condom and does a quick job of cleaning himself off. Richie watches rapt, Eddie’s words bouncing around his head like a pinball machine. Eddie wants to touch him. _Eddie_. He wants to touch him.

He starts on his chest, running his hands over his nipples to his shoulders. He’s got Richie pinned to the bed, a position Richie has become well-acquainted with. He loves it. 

Really, he thinks, he loves whatever Eddie wants to do with him.

Eddie kisses him again, soft and slow as he trails his fingers down to cup Richie’s hip. He sits back just far enough to spread a generous dollop of lube on his hand.

“Oh, that’s too much,” Eddie observes mildly, not at all deterred enough to not wrap his fingers solidly around the base of Richie’s dick.

“Oh my god,” Richie intones.

He drags his hand up slowly, watching Richie’s shaft disappear under his fist with dark eyes. 

Richie closes his eyes, because watching Eddie watch himself touch Richie with such tender wonderment is far too much for him at the moment.

Eddie’s warm breath at his ear, “Is it okay?”

He nods against the pillow. “Yeah, Eds.”

Eddie kisses the corner of his mouth as he moves his hand slower than Richie’s ever jerked himself off. Richie whines a little but it’s perfect, it’s perfect because anything faster would’ve made Richie come already.

Eddie nips Richie’s jaw and he gasps, fingernails digging into the space between Eddie’s shoulder blades where he’s keeping him close.

“Why aren’t you being loud?”

“I am just _—really_ focusing on not coming right away,” Richie grits out.

“So what if you do? You know how many more times we get to do this? Fuck, if you get hard again tonight, we’ll just do this all over.” Eddie licks along his neck. “I wanna hear you.”

“Eddie, that’s so fucking hot,” Richie immediately says, needing no further encouragement. “You’re so fucking hot, babe. Your hand is on my fucking _dick_ right now, you’re touching my dick and it feels fucking incredible.”

He feels his smile curve against his skin. 

Richie keeps up a string of nearly incomprehensible babbling. Eddie’s hand slips over him again and again with such care and tenderness that he loses his breath.

“Shit, Eddie,” Richie gasps, bucking up in his fist.

“Yeah?”

“Faster, can you please—” He blinks wetness from his eyes. “Can you go faster?”

He nods, picking up speed until Richie is moaning wordlessly into the night. Eddie drops his mouth to the juncture between Richie’s shoulder and neck, biting and laving and sucking at the skin there. 

A _hickey_ , the fucker is giving him a hickey, and Richie is so out of his mind with love and affection that it all happens pretty quick from there. The tightening of his stomach, Eddie sucking hard at his neck, and then Richie coming so hard he sees stars.

“Eddie, oh my god,” falls from Richie’s lips. _“Eddie._ I love you so much.”

The love of his life touches his face. “Are you okay?”

“Huh?” Richie takes a deep breath and reaches under his glasses to wipe stray emotion from his eyes. “Yeah, I’m good.”

“But you’re crying?” Eddie says incredulously.

“Well fuck, maybe I’m one of those guys who cries after sex.” He smooths away the wrinkle across Eddie’s brow and asks, “Will you still love me, Eddie? In all my embarrassingly emotional glory?”

Eddie takes Richie’s hand on his face and kisses his palm, infinitely tender. “This is the least embarrassing thing about you, Rich.”

He laughs, fondness bursting from the very core of him. 

Eddie wipes off his hand and Richie’s chest with a tissue before tucking himself into Richie’s side. His lips brush the spot on his neck he’d been biting at. “Shit, I didn’t mean to do that.”

Richie snorts. “Yeah right.”

“I mean it! It’s gonna bruise.”

“Uh, duh. Isn’t that the point of a hickey?”

“I did not give you a _hickey,”_ Eddie insists despite all evidence to the contrary.

“It’s cool, Eds, I like it.” Richie pauses, and Eddie narrows his eyes, knowing him all too well. “Do you want me to give you one too, so you can show off to your work buddies how hot Ramona is for you?”

“Ugh, shut up, shut _up—”_ Eddie kisses him before he can make any more jokes, but considering that he crawls back on top of him and lets Richie suck a hickey onto his chest later, he’s probably not all that mad.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I spent way too long rewriting that diner scene. You'd think I'd be agonizing over the smut, but nope! I was way more focused making sure their convo wasn't too similar to their talk at Stan's.  
> Anyway, thanks for reading, lemme know your favourite part of this chapter!!


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> An update two weeks in a row! Yes! I really just wanna get finished posting this so I can focus on other fics, so I managed my time wisely this weekend and here we are! Just two chapters left!  
> Warnings for anxiety/panic attack stuff and references to Sonia-related homophobia

They’re sitting on folding chairs on the back patio after a hard day’s work. Richie’s chewing on an unlit cigarette from the same now-stale pack he’s had since Eddie moved in. He hasn’t smoked weed in a while, either; the guy from his first year English class he usually bought off is studying abroad and Richie doesn’t know where his roommates get theirs.

That’s a good sign, right? That he can stop whenever he wants? Must mean that he doesn’t have a problem, nobody needs to worry. What he’ll do when Eddie isn’t around to distract him is another question entirely.

Eddie tugs his fingers through Richie’s mess of curls in response to Richie complaining about his day. “It _is_ getting long.”

Richie got in shit with his manager because a customer claimed they found his hair in the food. And yeah, okay, the long, black hair they pulled out of the cobb salad sure did look like his, but what did they expect when all their servers were singing and dancing while they slung food around? Richie’s sweat was probably an extra topping, too.

“Gives you something to pull on,” Richie replies around his cigarette.

“Shut up.” Eddie wraps his fist around the hair at the base of Richie’s neck. “You’ve got enough for a ponytail, man.”

Richie closes his eyes and smirks, leaning into Eddie’s hand. “Would you date a guy with a ponytail, Eds?”

He scoffs and lets him go. “Have you had it cut since you moved out of your mom’s house?”

He pouts a little without Eddie’s ministrations. “Sorry, what? I can’t think without you—” He gestures at his head.

“And I can’t hear you with the—” Eddie gestures at the smoke hanging from Richie’s bottom lip.

He tosses it on the patio table and looks at Eddie expectantly. Eddie scrapes his chair closer so he can lean his arm on the back of Richie’s chair and traipse his fingers through his curls.

“Ah, yeah, there we go.” Richie gives him a lopsided grin. “Uh, I gave myself a hack job first year when someone said I looked like Weird Al.”

Eddie laughs at that for longer than strictly necessary. “Did you get it fixed after?” 

“Nah, it just grew out. Other than that, Bev gave my bangs a trim when I saw her last.”

“Look at me?” Eddie says, so Richie does. Eddie tugs the ends of Richie’s hair, and turns his face this way and that, hands on his jaw. Richie’s enjoying getting manhandled by his boyfriend after a bullshit day at work, but then Eddie lets him go and says, “Okay, I’m cutting your hair.”

He lifts a brow, amused. “Are you?”

He lifts a brow right back. “Are you gonna stop me?”

“No, but just remember, you’re gonna be the one looking at me all the time, so if you fuck it up, that’s a you problem.”

“We’re dating now, Rich,” he says as he stands. “A me problem _is_ a you problem.”

Eddie gets scissors, a brush, and a towel for around Richie’s shoulders, and then just starts snipping. He hums softly as he does so, starting with the back. 

Richie tilts his head to smile at him. “I love you, you know that?”

He rights his head with both hands. “Keep still or this cut’s gonna be uneven.”

Richie sighs and obeys Eddie’s instructions to the best of his ability. “What do you think we’re gonna do after?”

“After what?”

“School.”

“Get real jobs? Hopefully?”

Richie frowns. “What’s a real job for me?”

“I dunno, what are you getting this degree for?” Eddie asks.

“Would you laugh if I said tell jokes?” Richie replies.

“Shouldn’t I?”

Richie grins. “Where would you wanna get these magical real jobs?”

Eddie blows strays hair off of the back of Richie’s neck, which makes him shiver. “Mike’s mentioned Washington before. I think the air’s nice out there?”

“The air?” he repeats dubiously.

“Because of all the trees?”

“The trees?”

“Well shit, Rich, it’s not like I’ve been been reading up on local economies and rent prices, how else am I supposed to answer this question?”

“What about California?” Richie offers. “Beaches. Palm trees.”

Eddie replies with, “Traffic. Sunburns.”

“Is that a no?”

“No.” He brushes through Richie’s hair again before going back to cutting. “LA’s the best place to be a starving artist other than New York, I guess.”

“You think I’ll be starving?”

“No, I’ll get a boring but well-paying office job to keep you well-fed on pizza and Cheetos.”

Eddie acknowledging that they’d be together makes Richie’s heart skips a beat. 

“Oh that sounds like a _dream,_ Eddie my love!” 

Eddie shakes a hair through Richie’s curls and then comes to stand in front of him. “I’ll just fix your bangs, and then I think I’m done.”

He bends down to check the evenness of Richie’s hair, and with his face so close, Richie can’t help but lean forward to try to kiss him. 

Eddie chuckles and holds him back by the forehead. “I’m doing something, Rich.”

“Yeah, I’m trying to do something, too,” Richie mutters.

“What? _Me?”_

He lifts a shoulder lightly. “Maybe.”

Eddie rolls his eyes and pulls a curl through his fingers to snip. “I think California would suit you. It’s bright.”

He carefully lifts a brow with his eyes closed. “You think I’m bright?”

“You brighten up _my_ life.”

Richie can’t help his grin. “Shut up.” Then, because he can it as much as he wants, “I love you.”

The first time Richie had told him he loved him in Eddie’s dorm, Richie was sure of it. No doubts, no qualms. But the more time they spend together, joking and living and being honest—he feels it stronger than he did then. Like he’s falling more in love each day. He can’t imagine hitting the bottom of his emotions for Eddie.

Richie calls whenever he’s gonna be home late, after the first time he doesn’t. 

It’s not like it’s a big deal; two hours isn’t that late… is what Eddie tries to convince himself of after staring at the local news for an hour and a half waiting for Richie’s face to flash across the screen, with the announcement that he’s beaten up or worse. Even the scenarios Eddie’s trying to talk himself down with—like instead of getting violently jumped, he’d gotten clipped by a car—do nothing to calm him.

His fingernails dig into his elbows where his arms are wrapped around himself and he’s desperately counting his breathes, repeating _he’s fine he’s fine he’s fine_ on repeat while horrific visuals play out in his head.

Eddie was already spiralling by the time he got home. That morning some gross-looking guy on the bus had sneezed in his face, and his day had gone downhill from there. He was snapping at people all day, and before he left his supervisor basically told him to smarten up or he wouldn’t have a job.

So when Eddie got home, he hadn’t mentally prepared for anything other than cuddling with Richie the rest of the night, as soon as he walked through the door.

Except Richie isn’t walking through the door.

And wouldn’t that just be their luck? Survive a brutal small town and a demon clown just to get hit by a car in the big city? Or roughed up for his wallet? Or—?

The lock on the front door clicks, and hinges squeak as the door opens. Eddie whirls around, kneeling on the couch.

“Hey.” Richie’s dragging his feet, newly-cut hair flat, and work shirt covered in food-related stains. _He’s fine, he’s fine, he’s fine._ “Sorry I’m late.”

Eddie slumps against the back of the couch, all the unnecessary adrenaline that had been holding him taut suddenly disappearing and him limp. “Where _were_ you?”

Richie’s attention darts away from where he’s kicking off his shoes. The weariness pulling his face down is replaced by wide-eyed guilt. “I’m sorry, Freddie bailed halfway through his shift. They made me cover for him. I shoulda called—”

He’s halfway across the room and Eddie finally stands. He gives a sharp shake of his head. “It’s fine, it’s fine. You don’t need to apologize. I just…”

God, he’s about to fucking _cry._ And that’s so stupid, nothing even happened. Everything is fine. Obviously Richie had to stay late at work. It’s the most logical thing in the world and Eddie hadn’t even considered it.

And now he’s fucking shaking because Richie’s finally here, and Eddie’s making him feel like shit for being out a little longer than he was supposed to be.

Just like Eddie’s mom used to do.

“I know,” Richie says, reaching for his shoulder. Eddie steps away. He doesn’t need comforting; nothing even happened. Richie’s hand drops. “I wasn’t thinking, I should’ve let you know—”

“It’s _fine,”_ Eddie insists. “It’s not your fault, I just had a bad day, and I… never react to anything normally.”

“Hey, if you randomly didn’t show up for two hours I’d be worried, too,” Richie says softly. He sits against the arm of the couch and twists his fingers in his lap. “What can I do?”

His breath leaves him in a shudder, and he turns so he isn’t so tempted to break down in his arms, because this is all so stupid. “Just keep talking.”

And Richie does. It’s a stand up routine, but it’s never gonna see the stage, and he’s sure Richie knows that. It’s dark and flippant at the same time, because it’s about a certain clown and how really, truly gross sewers are.

“That’s awful,” Eddie says when he can breathe without his lungs squeezing on the air. “Just awful.”

“You don’t think it’s funny?”

“It’s very funny.” He comes to stand between Richie’s legs. Richie looks up at him, offering up the tenderest of looks. “But very bad.”

Richie’s hands settle on Eddie’s hips, and he gives a tired smile. “Just like me.”

Eddie wraps his arms around his shoulders and lays his head on top of Richie’s. He slips his fingers through his curls, scratching at his scalp like he likes. Eddie hadn’t cut much length off; just enough to give the impression of an actual style instead of a shaggy mess. He’s still kind of shocked that Richie trusted him enough to do it, but he supposes he shouldn’t be.

“You didn’t have a good day?” Richie prompts quietly.

Eddie closes his eyes. “I don’t wanna talk about it. Can we just go to bed? I’m sure you’re not tired—”

“I’m exhausted, baby,” Richie says against his chest. 

And usually Eddie hates when Richie calls him baby, because he’s _not_ a baby, thank you very much. He’s a grown man and he can handle himself and he doesn’t need anyone worrying about him.

But now Richie says it so gentle, so tender, like all he wants is to care for him in whatever way Eddie wants. 

“I woke up the same time as you, remember?” Richie adds.

“You didn’t take a nap before work?”

“No, I made shepard’s pie.”

He pulls back to look at his face, not understanding. “Shepard’s pie?” 

“Yeah, you know how we bought too many potatoes? I wanted to use them, so I dug out the recipe book my mom mailed me, and it’s surprisingly easy to make. So now when I’m on night shift next week you’ll have something for dinner, apparently it freezes well, whatever that means—”

And that’s is what finally gets him. 

Eddie’s face crumples and he bites back a sob, love and tenderness leaking out his tear ducts.

“Eddie?” Richie runs his hands up his arms, mildly alarmed. “What? Do you not like shepard’s pie—”

He cups his face in his hands. “I love you so much.”

“Alright? You haven’t even tasted it yet, I wouldn’t get too excited.”

He laughs through his tears, and kisses him on his forehead, his cheeks, a peck on the lips. “You just ever—get so full of love you cry?”

“Oh.” He finally seems to get it. A smile spreads across his face. “Dude, I cry like every time you get your hands on my dick.”

“Oh, right.” Eddie laughs again. He wipes his tears away and hooks his fingers through Richie’s belt loops. “C’mon, let’s go to bed and then we can both have cried tonight.”

Richie’s already standing. “The weirdest come-on ever, but I'm down.”

Bev and Ben visit for a few days, and Bev’s so impressed with Richie’s new haircut that she makes Eddie give her a trim, too. 

“We all know I like a homemade haircut,” Bev says with a wink when she hands the scissors to an apprehensive Eddie. 

Richie elbows Ben with a grin. “And I can cut your hair after, Ben!”

“Not in a million years, Trashmouth.”

After Eddie finishes, Bev spends an extra fifteen minutes in the bathroom doing touch ups, and when she comes out, of course she looks like a fucking model.

“Well, if risk analysis doesn’t work out, you always have a backup plan,” Bev says, primping in the hallway mirror.

“So are you gonna pay me for services rendered?” Eddie replies, amused.

Nobody asks, but Richie says suggestively, “I already paid. Not in cash, but in… sexual favours.” He blinks. “God, I really expected somebody to shut me up.”

“You could shut yourself up next time?” Eddie offers flatly despite his faint blush. He shoots a look at Ben. “I thought you would stop him, honestly.”

But Ben is busy gazing adoringly at Bev.

Richie rolls his eyes. “Are we going, or what?”

They take to the streets to get out of the house, and Bev gives them a tour of her favourite places she’d found when she was here last. She’s aghast that even though Richie and Eddie are currently living in the city, they haven’t hit up any “cute eclectic thrift shops” or “authentic NY coffee cafes” or “local art houses”, whatever that is. 

“You’re wasting New York,” Bev accuses as they walk down a street full of the local artsy shit she’s so excited about. “What do you do for dates?”

Richie scratches the back of his head. They walk around, mostly. They’ll sometimes grab coffee or ice cream on the way, but he wouldn’t call strolling aimlessly dates. Unless they were? But then any time they left the house together could count as a date. Movies counted, right? When they sat all the way in the back so they could hold hands in the dark.

“We saw _The Babysitter’s Club Movie_ ,” Eddie offers, on the same wavelength as Richie.

Bev looks at them over her shoulder. “Why?”

“The books were good,” Ben cuts in.

“That’s what I said!”

“The movies, is that it?” Bev asks incredulously. “You could go to the movies in Derry.”

“We went to Central Park to feed ducks once,” Richie says.

Eddie adds, “And then he got attacked by a goose, so we got corn dogs from a street vendor instead.”

Bev rolls her eyes. They stop for a red light. She sticks her head out checking for traffic, and when she doesn’t see any, she waves them across without waiting for the pedestrian signal. A wild woman.

“What about a comedy club?” Ben suggests. “Isn’t that kind of your whole thing, Richie?”

He bites down on a groan. “Is that any place for a date?”

“Better than getting chased around by geese,” Ben says. 

Richie tosses his arm around Eddie’s shoulders. “Ah, come on, why would we go out when we can suck face at home?”

“God, that is a lot of it, isn’t it?” Eddie mutters as though he’s just realizing their true motivations for hanging around at home.

Bev lets the subject drop and leads them into an antique store Richie is afraid to even look at for fear of breaking something. There’s chesterfields and spindly-legged tables and gaudy lamps that would look absolutely hilarious in Richie’s student house.

Richie peers at a hand-written price tag and takes a whopping step away from it.

They start wondering around and Ben says, “Hey, Eddie, my aunt keeps asking about you. Can I tell her you’re gay now?”

Eddie inspects a stiletto-shaped perfume bottle and asks innocently, “Who said I was gay?”

Richie interrupts and says to Ben, “Just tell her that Eddie’s got his hands full with his boyfriend, if you know what I mean—”

“Yeah, Ben,” Eddie says, though he’s smiling at Richie, “tell your aunt that my boyfriend’s a horny little shit, would you?”

Bev looks up from the ugly porcelain doll she’s poking at. “Shall I tell my aunt as well?” 

“Well, you can tell anyone you want,” Richie announces airily, “that _my_ boyfriend is the light of my life and I cherish every minute with him.”

Bev ruffles his hair. “That’s very sweet, Richie. Eddie, you should be nicer to your boyfriend.”

Eddie sends her a scathing look.

Ben spreads his hands, rounding back to his point. “I just need my aunt to stop asking why Eddie won’t date my cousin.”

Bev’s already pulling him away to look at milk crates full of old records. 

Eddie smirks at Richie over the antique sewing machine that separates them. “Remember when you asked me why I wouldn’t date Ben’s cousin at Christmas?” 

“I remember asking if she was hot.”

He presses his lips together in a way Richie’s pretty sure means that Eddie would kiss him to shut him up if they weren’t in public. “I had to bite my tongue to keep from saying ‘because I’m in fucking love with you, asshole’.”

“You shoulda told me then,” Richie says.

“You would’ve physically combusted.”

“And?” He leans forward to wink at him. “I would’ve died happy.”

On a Wednesday they both have off work, they take Bev’s suggestion and head to some cool neighbourhood in Brooklyn to take full advantage of everything the city has to offer.

Before they start their day though, Eddie stops at a payphone to call his mom so she doesn’t get hold of Richie’s home phone number. Apparently she’s bought a phone with call display to help her combat scammers.

Richie leaves him to it and stops at a coffee place a block away to pick up some breakfast. He gets chocolate croissants and two cold brews, and crams them with cream and sugar because he’s sure he’s not going to like it, but it’s too hot out for coffee and nobody in the area is making milkshakes at 11 AM, which he considers an indicator of a failing neighbourhood.

When he returns to Eddie, he’s still in the phone booth. His mom must’ve searched his area code somehow, because he’s saying, “I’m just visiting New York for a few days, Ma.”

Eddie wedges the booth door open, and Richie passes him his drink. “Yeah, I’ve got hand sanitizer. No, I haven’t been taking the subway.”

Richie goes in on his croissant, dropping flaky bits of pastry all over his shirt.

“How would I be on the subway right now, Ma? They don’t have phones on them.” He takes a sip of his drink and grimaces. He mouths ‘ _What the fuck is this_?’ at Richie.

Richie shrugs. “You gonna let me say hi to my future mother-in-law?”

Eddie flips him off and turns his back on him. His mom’s voice on the other end sounds like Charlie Brown’s parents. “I _assume._ I assume there are no payphones on subways, but I wouldn’t know because I’ve never been on one!”

Richie leans against the plexiglass and takes the opportunity to check Eddie out. He’s wearing shorts and an old floral shirt Richie grew out of, because he’s finally getting tired of pastel polos. One of their goals for the day is to check out some thrift shops and freshen up Eddie’s wardrobe with statement pieces—Bev’s idea. 

When Richie had asked if he should also get statement pieces, she said that his closet was nothing but statement pieces, and he should consider stocking up on some neutrals. He’s not going to do that.

He tunes back in when Eddie’s voice peaks with distress.

“No, I’m not gonna get AIDS from the subway!” He blinks furiously, eyes shining. 

“Hang up,” Richie tells him, reaching for the phone.

“Because I’ll put a freaking condom on the pole before putting it in my mouth,” Eddie spits, wrestling with Richie to hold him off.

He snorts.

“I’m sorry, I just—I just wanted to wish you a happy birthday,” Eddie says. He spills a bit of iced coffee on Richie’s knee as he’s elbowing him out of the phone booth. “I’m sorry—I sent you a gift, check the post office.”

Richie yanks the phone from his grasp. Eddie’s mother is _shrieking_ on the other end.

“Or don’t, then, whatever!” Eddie shouts into the phone in Richie’s hand before he takes it back and slams it onto the receiver.

His shoulders heave as he reaches into his fanny pack and squirts sanitizer into his palms. Richie waits as Eddie goes through breathing exercises he read about in a book on meditation. 

After a minute, Richie says, “I really thought you were about to tell her you’ve been blowing me.”

Eddie looks at him. “You want her calling _your_ parents?”

He sucks on his straw and grimaces at the taste. “Guess not. You okay, though?” 

He nods, elbowing out of the phone booth. “I’m great, I’m good.” He nabs the second croissant and downs half of it in one bite. “Let’s find me some statement pieces.”

And it’s all fine and dandy until that night, when they both wake up screaming from nightmares. It’s a common enough occurrence, but they’ve never synced up before. So they’re both freaking out more because the other’s upset, until Eddie grabs Richie’s hand and holds it to his beating chest.

Richie focuses on the solid, pounding heartbeat under his palm, and the fear and shock from his dreams slowly fade to memory. 

Eddie sits up, feet hitting the floor, Richie’s hand kept loosely in his on the mattress.

“I don’t wanna do this anymore,” he says hoarsely.

“What?” Richie swallows thickly. Without his glasses, Eddie’s silhouette is blurry and dark against the moonlight seeping through the window. “You don’t think tandem nightmares are romantic?”

He hangs his head. “I just wanna sleep without—god, I wanna spend a day without worrying about bullshit.”

Richie sits up behind him and lays his free hand on his shoulder. When Eddie leans toward him and not away, Richie slides into place against his back, hooking his chin over his shoulder.

Eddie grabs his elbow, locking him in place. “You know why I waited so long before we did hand stuff?” 

“It was like three months, it wasn’t that long.”

Eddie ignores him, which is rude because he’s the one who’d asked the question. “Because the only way I could convince myself to do it any sooner was if we used condoms for that too. For hand stuff! God, it’s so stupid.”

Richie noses his cheek. “What’d you dream about, babe?”

He doesn’t respond for a moment. When he does, it’s barely above a whisper. “You were a leper and I was blowing you and your dick fell off in my mouth.”

Richie bursts out laughing.

Eddie whirls on him. “It’s not funny!”

“It’s not, it’s not,” he agrees. He tries his best to school his features into solemnity and fails. _“Isn’t_ it though?”

Eddie shoves him off, but doesn’t let him go too far. He gets them back up against the pillows and then buries his face in Richie’s chest.

“It’s all so stupid,” he mumbles.

“Eds, you know I don’t mind—”

“But _I_ mind! I mind all my fucking baggage—the clown stuff, and the mom stuff, and the gay stuff, and the health stuff. This is exactly what my mom always wanted, for me to be too terrified to do anything.” He digs his forehead into Richie’s clavicle and groans in frustration. “I wanna be well-adjusted.”

And he looks up at Richie with big sad eyes, like he doesn’t know what to do and just wants an answer.

Richie’s chest hurts. He thumbs a drying tear off Eddie’s cheek. He can’t think of anything to say except, “You know, Stan’s seeing a therapist. Patty made him go at first, but he thinks it’s helping.”

“Yeah?”

He nods. “I mean, you can talk to me all you want, and I’ll always listen, but my coping mechanisms aren’t gonna help you.”

“Because they don’t even help _you_ ,” Eddie retorts.

Richie squeezes him tight. “Well, one of us should be well-adjusted, right? I vote for you.”

Eddie kisses the underside of his jaw. “I love you, Richie.”

And it’s like a salve every time he hears it, fixing something in him he didn’t know was broken and bruised, battered beyond repair. 

He tugs the blankets back up around them. “Love you more, Eds.”

Richie’s always had nicknames for Eddie, and he still uses all the ones he’d cooked up in their childhood. But now he calls his boyfriend things like ‘babe’ or ‘sweetheart’ and even ‘honeybunch’ when he’s being purposely annoying. 

Eddie still just calls him ‘Richie’, and ‘Rich’, or ‘Tozier’ when Richie pisses him off. But there’s a myriad of ways that Richie’s name comes out of Eddie’s mouth, so Richie doesn’t feel like he’s missing out on anything.

There’s the _Richie!_ he shouts when he’s scandalized. There’s the flat, unimpressed _Richie._ he drops when he makes a bad joke. There’s the _oh_ _god_ , _Rich_ he moans in bed (along with the _please, Richie_ and the _don’t stop Richie_ ). Richie’s got a soft spot for those versions of his name for sure.

But, hands down, his favourite way that Eddie says his name is low and soft, mumbled into his chest or tickling his ear, offered like it’s a gift in cupped palms. It sounds just like ‘baby,’ like ‘sweetheart’, like ‘my love’. No one’s ever spoken his name like that before, and with any luck, no one else ever will.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, thanks so much for all your feedback! Lemme know how you liked this one!


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm finally working from home this week, and I'm gonna have a five day weekend next weekend, so the last chapter is definitely gonna be out in the next week!  
> As always, thank you for your feedback!

Turns out Richie’s coworkers had already assumed he was gay (“Yeah, you’re dating the twink you live with and stare at every time he comes in, right? Real subtle.”) So he gets to talking with them about where they hang out.  When they bring up the West Village and he just stares at them blankly, they all roll their eyes and tell him which bus route will get him there.

So that’s where Richie and Eddie are, smack dab in the middle of a summer arts festival. Vendors sell art, used books, handmade crafts, and street performers play instruments and juggle. It’s a sea of proud flamboyance, filled with couples of guys and guys, and girls and girls, and people with genders yet to be defined. 

Richie swings their hands between them as they walk. “We should move here.”

“Wow,” Eddie says in awe. “I mean— _ no _ , but wow.”

Richie picks a dirty flyer off the ground that lists all the activities of the weekend. He’s interested in the outdoor performance of  _ A Midsummer’s Night Dream _ , where the actors are chosen from the crowd and perform whatever they remember of the play.

“Do you know the lines?” Eddie asks as they stop to peruse a table of homemade candles in psychedelic colours.

Richie whistles. “Not well enough to not fuck it up.”

It’s the first time he’s been to any sort of official gay gathering (unless the rave counts) and he has this hovering thought in his mind to not make a fool of himself, to make a good impression, even though no one’s looking at him.

So he thinks.

“Richie?” An incredulous voice says from behind him.

He turns around and finds Bryant, from school, with his arm around an Indian guy in a beanie.

“Oh, thank heavens, I was worried your sense of style was spreading,” Bryant says, but he’s smiling. 

“Hey, this is a neutral in this crowd.” Richie tugs on his shirt. Then he points at a person with a neon green tank top under a clear plastic duster. “What do you call that?”

“That’s fashion,” Bryant’s companion says in a deep voice.

Eddie wrinkles his nose. “There’s nothing fashionable about getting a heat rash. Look, his armpits are fogging up. Somebody help him!”

Richie laughs, draping his arm over his shoulders.

Bryant’s lips twitch and he lays a hand on the guy’s chest. “May I introduce my boyfriend, Noel?” 

“Hey, I’m Eddie,” Eddie introduces himself before Richie has the chance to introduce him with a nickname.

“Ah, from weekend rehearsal.” Recognition lights Bryant’s eyes. He smiles at Richie. “I’m happy to see you two lovebirds worked it out.”

Richie blushes, embarrassed and pleased all at once. “Eddie’s still got condoms,” he blurts for lack of anything better to say. “If you need them.”

Eddie’s face goes very red. “Actually I don’t, Richie.”

“What?”

He’s staring daggers at him. “They have been used.”

A sly grin spreads across Richie’s face as he remembers the two of them desperately rummaging through Eddie’s fanny pack a few night ago after discovering an empty condom box in the bedside drawer.

Eddie rolls his eyes and says to Bryant, “Are you going to the Shakespeare thing?”

Noel is looking like he’s about to bust out laughing, but Bryant’s face remains impassive except for a sudden sneer. “Oh, those are always disasters. Drunk fucks who have no respect for the material.”

Richie’s face lights up. Eddie’s already looking at the map on the flyer.

“I’ll see you in September, Tozier,” Bryant says dryly.

“We could coordinate so you don’t get stuck with me in so many classes,” Richie offers with a wink.

“I’ll let the fates decide on that one,” he says as he walks away with his boyfriend in tow.

Later that afternoon, after Richie’s performed and lost his shirt somehow, and the paint and glitter covering Richie’s chest has migrated to Eddie’s cheek, they’re waiting in line to order churros from a street vendor.

Eddie leans in close and says, “Richie? If you want an update?”

“Hm?” He’s thumbing Eddie’s cheek trying to clean him off but somehow just spreading the glitter around.

“I am gay,” Eddie says. “I’ve decided.”

He grins. “Oh?” 

He gives a sure nod. “I’m good with it now.”

Richie wraps an arm around his waist and kisses him, spreading the glitter to his lips. 

Richie’s mom calls when he’s getting ready for work and Eddie’s just getting in the door. It’s one of those days where they barely see each other except for too early in the morning and late at night after Richie’s closing shift. 

Richie’s been late enough this week (and every other week) trying to steal one more moment with Eddie, so he’s gonna have to get Eddie to take over the call before he leaves.

Eddie swats Richie’s ass with a folder in greeting as Richie tugs his shoes on, one shoulder scrunched up to hold the phone to his ear while his mom talks.

“We won tickets off the radio to this show Barb Jenson saw last month,” she’s saying. “You remember Barb Jenson? She lived on Maple Street, but she’s on the north side of town now—”

“Sure,” Richie says, off in search of Eddie once his shoes are firmly tied to his feet.

“Your father and I are very excited. Air fare and hotel stay is included, so we’ll be making a little vacation out of it…”

He finds Eddie in the kitchen, rummaging through the near-empty fridge for an after-work snack. Richie had left half his lunch of mac and cheese in there for this express purpose, but he doesn’t tell Eddie that. 

He covers the receiver and grabs Eddie’s hip from behind. “Eddie, how would you like to play a sexy role playing game where you’re the secretary and I get the chance to show up to work on time?”

He twists to face him. He’s already scooping cold mac and cheese into his mouth. “If I’m the secretary, aren’t you already at work?”

“Just talk to my mom, dude. She only calls when she has something to tell me, but I don’t have time to wait until she gets to her point.”

Eddie rolls his eyes and holds out his hand.

Richie kisses him on the cheek. Returning to the phone he says, “Hey, mom? I gotta run, but Eddie’s here visiting again, and he’s got all the time in the world to listen to you, okay?”

“Oh, he’s there again? Fantastic. Ask him to join us.”

Richie doesn’t know what she’s talking about, so he says, “Yeah, check with Eddie on that one. I gotta go, alright? Love you.”

“Love you too, Richie,” she says. “I’m looking forward—” 

Richie slaps the phone in Eddie’s hand and bolts to catch his bus.

The bus is late, but only late enough to give him time to catch it, and not late enough to make him late for work. So that’s a win all around, and it’s not too busy at work, but he still makes mad tips, so when he gets home around ten thirty, he’s feeling pretty good.

As soon as he walks in, he smells something a bit more substantial than boxed mac and cheese cooking. Even though Eddie insists it’s bad for his digestion to eat so late, and even though Richie insists he doesn’t mind, and _ even though _ Eddie is very bad at cooking, Eddie usually waits until Richie gets home to have dinner. 

At the counter, Eddie’s scooping spaghetti and meat sauce into two bowls. Eddie grins at him. “The noodles didn’t gloop together this time.”

“A ringing accomplishment.” Richie drapes his sweaty, grease-soaked body over Eddie’s back in a tired hug. He presses a kiss to his temple. “Gosh, my sexy secretary takes my calls  _ and _ makes dinner? I’m gonna leave my wife for you.”

“Again, I don’t understand this scenario of your secretary being at your home,” Eddie says, refusing to play along. “Wouldn’t it make more sense if I were your housekeeper?”

He squeezes his waist. “Either way, your legs would look killer in a skirt.”

He sets down the bowl and turns in his arms to kiss him, still talking. “’M not putting on a skirt for you, Rich.”

Richie’s hands slide down to grab his ass in his short shorts. “It’s okay. I dream about these shorts.”

Eddie laughs and pushes him away, despite Richie’s best efforts to keep their lips connected. “I spent all day slaving away at the stove, can we eat first?”

His stomach’s grumbling anyway. “Anything to please the sexiest housekeeper in the world.”

They sit in front of the TV with their dinner, Richie’s feet in Eddie’s lap for a hot second before Eddie pushes them away, claiming the stench is ruining his appetite. He’s probably not exaggerating.

“So what did my mom want?” Richie asks when he’s halfway through Eddie’s lovingly-crafted spaghetti.

Eddie slurps up a noodle. “Uh, she said she told you? They got tickets to a Broadway show. They’re in New York this weekend.”

His brows pop above his glasses. “She told me like half that. A quarter. Do they, like—”

Eddie sets his bowl down. “She invited us out to dinner.”

_ “Us?” _

He gives him a look. “She definitely already told you to bring me. Do you listen to her at all?”

“Yes… A little. There’s just always so much filler, you know I can’t pay attention that long.”

“You pay attention to me,” he points out.

“You’re always saying something interesting.”

“That’s patently untrue.”

“Well, you’re interesting to  _ me.” _

Eddie rolls his eyes. “So, anyway, I said yes for you.”

“To dinner?"

“Uh huh. Tomorrow night. You’re not working, and she said they’d pay.”

Richie leans back in the couch. “Well, fuck.”

He fishes a paper out of his pocket. “If you wanna cancel,  _ you _ can call her. I wrote down the hotel’s phone number.”

“No…” Richie trails off. A free dinner sounds great. His mom and dad being there, and bringing his boyfriend along… His stomach starts to curdle.

“You don’t have to tell them anything,” Eddie says, already seeing the gears whirring in Richie’s head. “In fact, I would really rather you not tell them about  _ us _ _,_ in case they tell my mom.”

“Yeah, no, whatever you want,” Richie says immediately. “But they’re not gonna talk to your mom.”

The idea that he could announce to his parents that they’re together with Eddie sitting right there makes him go light-headed.

Richie hasn’t seen his parents since Christmas. He probably won’t see them again until next Christmas—if then. His dad had a fight with his brother in Michigan last time, so he doesn’t know if they’ll be invited this year. If it’s a Tozier Christmas in Derry, then Richie’s not going.  Which is a really good excuse to not ever tell them. He barely sees them, why should they know his business? 

On the other hand, why should he keep doing them the favour of allowing them to think he's straight? He's got this awful urge to shove it in their face, even if it could blow up in his.

“Your mom might be cool with you coming out,” Eddie says. “If you want to…”

“I’ll think about it,” Richie says.

“Don’t think too hard.” Eddie leans across the couch to thumb over his creased forehead. “You’ll get wrinkles.”

He kisses his palm. “Like you?”

“I don’t have wrinkles, dipshit.”

“You’re getting them.”

_ “ You’re _ getting them!”

Richie is stupidly nervous for dinner with his parents. He made Eddie help him choose an outfit, and he used gel to slick his hair back (“This isn’t a job interview, Richie.” “Maybe if I’d cared this much on interviews I’d have gotten a better job.”) He keeps wanting to hold Eddie’s hand on the bus ride over, but he can’t, so he fiddles with a button on his corduroy jacket.

“You still haven’t decided if you’re telling them?” Eddie asks when they get off the bus.

“I think I want to,” Richie says.

“Which is why you’re so nervous?”

Richie smiles at him.

Eddie lays a palm between his shoulders as they walk. “Just feel them out first, okay? No pressure. And remember, we can leave whenever. You don’t owe them anything if they act like dicks. Well, bigger dicks than  _ you _ , at least. You know what I mean.”

“You’re saying I have a huge dick.” Richie nods. “Thanks, babe.”

They’re laughing as they get to the restaurant, where Richie’s parents are waiting by the hostess stand. It’s a nice Italian place, a solid three out of five, which by New York standards is wildly out of Richie’s budget.

The hostess leads them to a table with a white table cloth, and Richie’s disappointed they didn’t get a booth; he already feels too exposed.

His mom’s hugged him, and touched his styled hair, and said he’s taller than the last time she saw him. His dad’s looked at his watch five times, voicing concern about being late for the play that doesn’t start for three hours.

“How are you liking New York so far?” Eddie asks once they’re all seated with menus. 

“Well you’re right, it is dirty,” Richie’s mom says. Richie and his dad both roll their eyes. He hates that. “But it’s nice for a visit, there’s so much to do. I’m sure you boys get up to all sorts of trouble in a big city like this.”

Does she imagine them like when they were kids, biking through the streets and ding-dong-ditching the neighbours?

“It’s been a lot of working,” Richie says. “And hanging out with friends.”

And discovering new ways to make Eddie moan his name.

His dad looks up from his menu like he’d heard the unspoken part. “Are you fitting in with this New York crowd?”

“Yeah, Dad, you know I’ve always been super cool. I fit right in.”

His mom shoots him a soft smirk. “You’ve always had friends, Richie. That’s the important part.”

His dad looks back at his menu with a shake of his head. “Hopefully not with the riffraff we saw walking around on the way here.”

Richie opens his mouth to ask what, pray tell, he means by that, but instead, a waiter appears at the table to take their orders. 

The conversation ebbs and flows, stilted but trying, and after their food arrives, his mom offers, “Your sister’s new boyfriend is a computer scientist,” as if that’s fun and relevant information for Richie.

Eddie, ever the brown-noser, says, “That’s interesting. Does he work on the hardware or software?”

She smiles and shakes her head. “Honey, I have no idea what that means.”

“It’s a good idea getting into these tech things early. It all moves so fast,” his dad interjects. “This’ll be a good man for Peggy to settle down with. Richie, what about you?”

“I don’t think I’ll settle down with Peggy’s boyfriend, no,” Richie replies as he cuts into his steak.

His mom smiles around her straw as she sips her diet Coke. They’d ordered a bottle of red for the table, which was left to Richie and Eddie after his dad complained that it was too sweet and ordered a beer. Richie is on his second glass.

“So no one special in your life?” his dad asks, ignoring Richie’s joke while acting like it’s a chore to feign interest.

“I have so many special people,” he corrects. Eddie taps his foot with his under the table. Richie shoves a piece of steak in his mouth to keep from going on.

“Just remember what I said about getting some poor girl pregnant—”

And Richie can't bite his tongue over that. “Why do you assume that whoever I'd have sex with would be miserable and sad? Maybe they'd love me, ever think about that?”

His father looks at him blankly. “What?”

“Are you seeing someone, sweetheart?” His mom asks. 

“Mr. Tozier, you said it’s important to get into tech early." Eddie's attempt at distraction has him asking a question like it’s a press conference. “Are you integrating new technologies into your dental practice?”

He spares him a glance, saying, “In a second. Richie, you’re deliberately misinterpreting what I said.”

He sets his fork and knife down because his hands are sweaty. “How was I supposed to interpret it?” 

“Obviously I meant that at your age, winding up with an unplanned pregnancy would upturn both you and some girl’s life.”

And he decides he really does need to clear up his dad's preconceptions about his life.

“Well you don’t have to worry about that.” Richie’s pulse is pounding in his ears. “I’m gay.”

His dad gapes at him. His mom lowers her forkful of linguine back to her plate.

“So about those computers, Mr. Tozier—”

His dad sets his jaw. “You know I’ve never cared for your shock and awe comedy—“

“Do I look like I’m fucking joking?”

Richie didn’t get mad when his friends thought him coming out was a joke, but now he’s not smiling, he’s not easing any tension; there’s no reason to assume he's not serious except for not wanting to hear it. 

“No,” he says mildly, “you need to work on your delivery.”

“Went,” his mom hisses.

“What?” He turns to her, jerking a hand at Richie. “He can’t take anything seriously, that’s always been his problem—“

“I am  _ right _ here,” Richie says louder than he intends to.

“Yes, we can all see you,” his dad says. He’d be rolling his eyes if he hadn’t spent years trying to nag that habit out of Richie and Peggy.

Richie finishes his wine and pours the rest of the bottle into his empty glass. “I choke on dick now. How do ya like that?”

Eddie shoots him an incredulous glare.

He’s not sure how Eddie was expecting Richie’s coming out to go, but this is pretty close to what Richie had in mind.

His dad gives him a cool look over his glasses. “Richard, you’re upsetting your mother.”

On the contrary, his mom is looking at Richie the same way she did that time in high school after he’d ran out on his grandma asking him if he was ever gonna bring a girl home. When he got back from the movies with Eddie, his mom said that maybe if he wasn’t always chasing his friends around, he’d have time to date. Richie said it wasn’t lack of opportunity, it was the lack of female interest. Girls didn’t like him. She said he just needed to be himself. He explained that he  _ is _ himself, and that’s exactly the problem.

She’s got the same expression now as when he said that.

She reaches across the table, nearly elbowing the empty wine bottle onto the floor. Eddie catches it.

She covers Richie’s hand with hers. “Richie, that’s not a kind way to talk about yourself. You always got so much shit from everybody else, you don’t need to be so mean to yourself, too.”

Richie’s face heats, simultaneously embarrassed and comforted. He struggles for a response. “It’s—I’m not being mean, Mom. I’m just gay.”

“Yes sweetie, but choking on it sounds a little violent to be doing with someone you love.”

“Oh my god,” Eddie breathes, barely audible.

“Jesus, Maggie,” his dad says.

“What?” she snaps at him.  _ “You’re _ not helping.”

“Who am I supposed to be helping?”

She lets go of Richie’s hand, and they start an argument that Richie immediately tunes out.

Eddie wraps his fingers around Richie’s elbow. “Rich.”

He looks at Eddie. Big brown eyes wide, a pink high on his cheeks.

“Are you okay?” Eddie asks quietly.

“I might throw up.”

“Please don’t, that was really expensive steak.”

Richie chokes out a laugh, tears pulsing at the back of his eyes. “Can I get some water?”

Eddie waves down a waiter for a glass of ice water, his mother hisses  _ “Enough!” _ at his dad, and their argument subsides. 

They all settle into an awkward silence as his mother finishes eating.

Richie chugs water to set his tears back. When he tries to pull his arm out of Eddie’s grasp, because Eddie doesn’t want his parents to know about them, Eddie slips their hands under the table instead and locks their fingers together out of sight.

His dad pushes his chair back the second his mom puts her fork own. “I’ll get the bill.”

“I want dessert,” Richie blurts. His throat still feels thick.

“You cannot be serious.”

“I am. I’m gay, I suck dick, and I want a double fudge lava brownie.”

His throws his napkin on the table and stands. “Go ahead. I’m visiting the facilities.”

His mom excuses herself for a moment to go after him, and Richie and Eddie have a calm couple minutes waiting for dessert.  It’s easier to breathe with just Eddie at the table. 

“Could’ve gone worse, I guess,” Eddie mutters.

Richie shrugs, armpits cooling with his sweat. “Sorry if I made you nervous. I wasn't gonna bring you into it."

"I know, you're just so... bold, I guess is the word."

"I'll take that as a compliment."

The brownie arrives for them to share. Richie has to stop himself from feeding little bites to Eddie with his spoon, because it’s what he does at home even though Eddie never _wants_ to get fed like a child; Richie just thinks it’s fun and romantic.

His mom returns, and Richie stiffens a little, but she’s quiet for a good minute until she says, “Can I ask something?” 

“Why not?” Richie says.

“I’m afraid it’ll be offensive.”

He swallows thickly around his next chocolately bite. He’s nervous again, but he says, “That’s never stopped me, why should it stop you?”

She looks between the two of them. “Eddie, you’re not really visiting, are you?”

Eddie sits up straight and sets his spoon down. “You can’t tell my mom.”

She tilts her head sympathetically. “Honey, I got a phone with caller ID just so I could screen her calls. I don’t talk to Sonia Kasprak.”

Richie and Eddie share a look. Richie shrugs jerkily. As ever, he wants to announce to the world how much he loves Eddie. But Eddie said he didn’t want to tell them, so it’s up to him.

“I’m technically visiting,” Eddie starts, “…for the whole summer. We’ve been living together the whole summer.” He swallows hard. “Because we’re dating.”

Richie holds his breath.

She says to Eddie, contemplatively, “I always kind of thought you had a little schoolboy crush on Richie.”

Eddie blushes bright red.

Richie’s eyes bug out of his head. “What? You  _ knew?” _

“I had the half-formed notion,” she corrected. “It’s not like I ever mentioned it to anyone; it’s not something you spread around in Derry, if you care about someone.”

“But you still let us hang out? All the time?” Richie presses, voice getting progressively higher. “And sleep over?” 

“Yes?” She gives him a weird look. “You made each other happy. And you never listened to me, anyway.” She folds a cloth napkin on the table. “But I am sorry.”

“For what?” Richie asks.

She opens her mouth, bottom lip wobbling just a little before she smooths it into an apologetic smile. “Sorry for whatever makes you never want to come back home.”

And that’s hard. That she thinks it’s all her fault. It’s a part, but she didn’t create Richie's deep, visceral fear of ever setting foot in Derry again. He’s a little surprised his absence has affected her this much, though.

“I… it’s not all you, or even Dad,” Richie says. “But, c’mon. You never wanted me around.”

“I did. I do,” she argues gently. “But you were always more at home with your friends than with us.” She looks between him and Eddie again. “I don’t know how long you’ve been together, but if it’s been a very long time, then I’m sorry that me and your father ever made you feel like you needed to hide that part of yourself, Richie.”

And that’s when the tears on standby come rolling down his cheeks, because he’d been so sure that if she’d known about their kisses in secret, that the crush went both ways, that Richie was gay and in love with his best friend, she’d have done everything in her power to stop it. That’s what made sense. Not an apology for making him feel like shit about himself.

Eddie squeezes Richie’s hand under the table.

“We’ve been dating a few months,” Eddie says when Richie busies himself with wiping his wet cheeks.

She smiles. “Then I’m sure this summer has been delightful for your young love.”

Richie nods slowly, kind of waiting for the other shoe to drop.

She nods at Richie’s thrice empty glass. “You’re not getting into  _ too _ much trouble out here, are you?”

He knows exactly what she’s asking, but he deadpans shakily, “No, we use condoms.”

“Rich,” Eddie groans, but Richie and his mom both laugh.

“Are you still smoking weed?” she asks him.

He presses a hand to his heart.  _ “Still? _ Whatever do you mean? I’ve never smoked the devil’s grass a day in my life.”

Eddie narrows his eyes at him. “You’ll admit to using condoms, but not weed?”

“Just as long as it’s not anything stronger,” his mom says. “And not too much. And watch the alcohol, too. You’ll keep an eye on him, right, Eddie?”

Eddie’s smiles his parent-winning smile, even though he won her over a decade ago. Maybe he thinks he’s on thin ice now that she knows he’s dicking down her son. “Yes, Mrs. Tozier. Always.”

“You’re a good boy, you know that?” she tells him. “I know all of you kids got up to mischief I can’t even imagine when you were younger, but I knew you’d always be okay when you were together.”

Which is truer than she could ever guess.

Richie’s dad returns, having paid the bill and now taps his watch impatiently. “Maggie, we’re going to be late.”

Richie pops the last bit of soggy brownie in his mouth and smiles wide at him. “Thanks so much for dinner, Dad. Worth every penny”

He huffs and leads them out of the restaurant.

They pause outside, much to his dad’s foot-tapping irritation. It’s dark out now, and his parents may be tipping into the potential of  _ actually _ running late.

His mom hugs Richie and Eddie again, and then shoots her husband a meaningful look.

“It was a pleasure seeing the both of you,” he says as he pulls a map of New York out of his pocket.

“Went,” she says.

Hiding behind the map, he tersely says, “I love you, son. I’d also love to get to the theatre on time.”

And he takes off down the street.

“He means it, you know,” his mom says. “He’s just a little surprised, is all.”

“He’s gotta be the only person in Derry who’d be shocked to find out I started sucking dick.”

Eddie elbows him in the ribs.

“Pardon me.” Richie throws an arm around his shoulders. “I meant found out that this is the love of my life. Mom, did you know Eddie is the love of my life?”

“I had a feeling.” She smiles warmly and cups his cheeks. “My baby boy. I love you too, you know that?”

He nods, trying to slink out of the emotions of the moment because he doesn’t know how to accept any of this like a normal person. When he gets home he’s gonna cry, big sobs; the kind that would’ve gotten him kicked out of the restaurant.

“Yeah.” His voice cracks. “I, uh, can call more if you want.”

“I’d love that. But I understand if you don’t.” She steps back and puts a hand over her heart. “Ugh, you’re both so handsome.”

“Mom.” Richie rolls his eyes. “You’re gonna be late.”

His dad’s at the corner already.

“Okay, I’m going.” She waves at them as she walks away. “Bye, boys. Take care of each other.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I went through like three different versions of that coming out conversation, but I definitely like this one the best. Not too dramatic or angsty, while still feeling realistic (I hope...) Lemme know what you thought!


	7. Chapter 7

Summer’s winding to a close. Classes have been picked and the choices mailed to their schools, and Eddie’s requested his single dorm room. Maybe he’ll get it this time.

It’s been the best summer of Richie’s life by far, and he’s not looking forward to letting it go in two weeks.

For now, Richie’s finishing up a night shift at the diner. They don’t do performances after 9PM because they’re down to half staff, but guests still get Richie to sing, despite him insisting he only shines as part of an ensemble. They always regret it.

He’s about to ask the cook to pop a fresh blueberry pie in the oven for him to take home to Eddie at the end of his shift when the welcome bells chime.

He turns around, swiping a menu off the counter. “Welcome, welcome, welcome. Have we entertained you before, or are you a—”

“Not a fresh young ingenue,” Eddie interrupts Richie’s rote greeting. He’s in his work clothes; slacks and a wrinkled teal button-up. The top few buttons are undone, and he must’ve taken off his paisley tie somewhere in his day.

Richie bounds over and hugs him, because his manager isn’t around to tell him that’s an unprofessional way to greet customers. 

“What’re you doing out so late, babe?”

“Some other interns dragged me out to a bar because it's our last week. I only agreed because it was a block away from here and I could walk you home after.”

“Aw.” He pinches his cheek. “You’re too sweet.”

Eddie swats him away, but he’s got a tired smile on his face. Richie leads him to a booth at the back, away from the two tables still seating customers. 

“What bar?” Richie asks as they sit down.

“Some sports bar.” He thunks his head against the red vinyl padding. “They kept eating the bar peanuts even though I _told_ them the statistics about the bottom of the bowl.”

Richie grimaces. “Even _I_ don’t eat bar peanuts, and I eat out of the garbage.”

“I’ve asked you to stop doing that.”

“Well, stop throwing out half-full chip bags.”

“For the last time, crumbs is not half-full!”

The cook yells an order up and Richie reluctantly slides out of the booth. He ruffles Eddie’s hair and says, “Lemme do my job, and then I’ll come back with a plate of curly fries for you.”

He hides a yawn behind his hand. “Okay.”

Richie’s halfway to leaning down to kiss away his forehead creases when the cook slams the order bell and Richie’s jerked back to his surroundings. 

He delivers pie slices to the table of drunk high schoolers, and gets the other table their check. He winks at the older women and wishes them well on the rest of their trip in the big apple. After a quick song and dance for the teenagers at their request, he returns to Eddie with the curly fries.

He’s looking at the song list as if he hasn’t read it a dozen times before.

“No ensembles after nine pm,” Richie says. “Or songs in ranges of baritone, soprano, tenor, alto—”

“That’s like all of them,” Eddie cuts in. “How did you get this job, again?” 

He grins rakishly. “My dashing good looks.”

“Can’t argue with that.”

They catch each other up on their day in minute detail, but they want to hear it. Eddie’s face-off with the printer, Richie’s updates on the drama between the hostess, a waitress and the busboy. It’s all important.

Eddie swipes a curly fry through ketchup with more attention than is probably necessary for the task. “And I uh… made a call at lunch.”

“Uh huh?”

“There’s a therapist office near my campus who’ll take my school health insurance. I had kind of a phone interview with a therapist today to, like, test her out.”

“Oh.” Eddie hadn’t mentioned it since that one night a few weeks ago, so Richie wasn’t sure if he actually planned to go through with it. “How’d it go?”

“Good.” He’s still looking at the fries. “We booked an appointment for when I get back.”

“That’s great.”

“Yeah, I—I hope so. She’s a lesbian, so she should be—”

“Wait, how do you know that?” Richie suppresses a laugh. “Did you ask her?”

He huffs, shedding a layer of nervousness clinging to him. “She mentioned it in passing when she said she’s in the unique position to treat any sexuality-related insecurities respectfully and empathetically.” 

“Yeah, that definitely sounds like something a therapist would say,” Richie agrees. "You tell her some stuff already, then?"

Eddie nods. “I didn’t want to waste my time, so I gave her a rundown—my mom and my hypochondria, and my shitty hometown that made me hate myself and my sexuality, but I told her I'm working on that and I’ve got a boyfriend now, so if that was gonna be a problem, I’d call a different office.”

Richie raises his brows, impressed at the breadth of vulnerability he’d managed to dump on a stranger. But what he says is, “Wow, you’re talking about me to your therapist already?”

He sends him a flat look. “Probably won’t be too much. You’re not one of my problems, Rich.”

“Aw, you’re so sweet,” Richie teases. “I’m not one of your problems. I’m gonna embroider that on a pillow.”

Eddie smiles softly, ducks his head and then looks out the window instead of replying. It’s dark outside, but the fluorescent diner lights shine bright above them, hiding the outside world unless they squint. They don’t squint, so their tired reflections stare back at them. Richie almost expects his to wave at him.

“You gonna be okay?” Eddie asks his reflection before turning to face him again. “When I go back to school?”

“Sure,” Richie says reflexively.

He lifts a brow. “But actually?”

He wipes his greasy fingers on a napkin to give himself something to do other than look Eddie in the eye. “I’ve been good.”

Richie’s been good because Eddie’s presence gives him better things to do than drink and smoke, and Eddie’s been around for when the nightmares get bad, and Richie hasn’t had party invites or the stress of school because it’s summer.

Pretty soon none of that would apply.

But Richie’s come to terms with plenty of the shit that had him freaking out last year. And he’s gonna miss Eddie like a missing limb, but he’ll be okay. He has to be.

“Your mom told me to watch out for you,” Eddie reminds him.

“Yeah but, Eds,” he says, because he can already see Eddie’s worry gears spinning. He taps his foot against Eddie’s under the table. “Don’t stress. I’m not gonna become an alcoholic just because you’re not in front of me, I promise.”

“Yeah…” He trails off. “Have you thought about talking to someone anyway?”

“And do what? Make jokes about how everyone I know has a clown phobia?” He blows air past his lips, leaning back in the booth. “I wouldn’t take it seriously. Especially when I can’t tell the whole story.”

But if Richie’s honest with himself, the clown isn’t the whole story, it’s only a tiny sliver. He’d lived before it, and he’s living love after it.

And maybe that’s where his hesitance comes from, that he could cough up so much information about who he is and why he’s like this without even touching on the supernatural demon clown fuckery that no therapist would ever believe. He’s said it before—Derry would be fucked up even without the clown. And he would be too.

“Maybe I’m just not up for it.” Richie pops the last cold curly fry in his mouth and winks at Eddie. “Proud of you, though. You’ve always been the brave one.”

He scoffs, which does nothing to hide his blush. “Speaking of brave—did that comedy club guy call you back?”

Richie shrugs a nod. “He says amateur night’s open to anyone.”

Eddie grins, raising his brows expectantly. 

“Tozier!” the cook calls. “You’ve still got real customers.”

Richie hops to his feet, giving Eddie’s hair another ruffle. “I’ll give you the deets later, babe.”

It’s a week and a half before school starts. Eddie’s intern job finished up last week, and Richie’s gone down to part time hours in anticipation of school, but he still might end up quitting if they ask him to work too many weekends. 

Clara’s already moved her stuff in—she made Richie and Eddie help her haul all her stuff out of her car—but she’s out of the house so much that it doesn’t affect their routine. Richie wonders if she got a new boyfriend she’ll spend all her time with. He hopes any new suitor is better than Jordan.

And Mike and Bill finally eke out a visit to New York.

It’s a last-minute thing, and Richie does not remember being apprised of the schedule. 

“You were supposed to pick them up from the train station!” Eddie’s yelling when Richie’s just rolled out of bed into the kitchen at 11AM. Groceries Eddie had just bought are on the counter, which is what he’d been doing instead of reminding Richie of his role in the plan.

“They can take a bus, can’t they?”

“Did you tell them which bus route?” Eddie asks, because he knows Richie didn’t. “Have either of them ever taken a city bus in their lives?”

Richie shrugs. “The subway?”

“The subway!” he repeats with increased incredulity. He spreads his arms. “Do _you_ know how to use the subway?” he asks, again, because he knows Richie doesn’t.

Richie’s already tugging his shoes on. This was a _lot_ of Eddie so early in the morning. “I’m going, Eddie, I’m going.”

“Their train got here an hour ago, Richie,” Eddie groans. “Did they call?”

“I dunno. Where’s my wallet?”

“Where did you leave it?”

“Well, let’s see. Last night you took my pants off in the living room, and yanked my jacket off in the hallway—”

“Don’t be cute, our friends are abandoned in New York City!”

The door bell rings.

Richie opens the door.

“So nothing’s changed, then?” Mike asks. He and Bill stand on the front stoop, bags in hand, looking no worse for wear, despite their abandoned status.

Richie waves them in. “Baby, look! Our incredibly intelligent friends found their way to our house all by themselves.”

“Do _not_ try that baby shit with me right now.” Eddie glowers at him as he comes out of the kitchen to greet them.

“Hey, when you said Richie was g-g-gonna pick us up at 10AM, I had my doubts,” Bill says. “We planned accordingly.”

Richie grabs him in a hug. “Good man.”

They all say their hellos, and Richie shows them to their rooms and lets them settle in before returning to Eddie in the kitchen putting away the groceries.

“Eddie…” Richie wades in tentatively.

Eddie throws the reusable grocery bags in the drawer and sighs. “I’m sorry I yelled.”

“Oh?” Richie’s brows raise. “I was gonna say sorry for forgetting something you almost definitely told me to do, but you can apologize for something you’re constantly doing, I guess.”

Eddie gives him a look. “I’m just stressed about going back to school.”

He comes up and puts his arms around his waist. He rubs his nose against his. “Aw, is somebody gonna miss me?”

He closes his eyes. “I’m gonna say no because you seem really smug about it.”

“Oh, then I’m not gonna miss you either.” Richie kisses his cheek. “I’m not gonna miss waking up with you, or going to sleep with you, or having you right here in my arms where you belong.”

Eddie looks up at him with his big doe eyes bursting with love, and Richie’s heart swells.

“Oh wow.” 

It’s Bill and Mike, hovering in the kitchen doorway.

“Well, I stand corrected,” Mike says. _“_ _That’s_ definitely changed.”

“Should we be knocking before walking into rooms now?” Bill asks with a smirk.

Richie rolls his eyes as they part. “Unless you wanna join in, I guess.”

“Richie, shut up,” Eddie says.

He winks at Mike and Bill. “He doesn’t wanna share me.”

Eddie shoves his shoulder, forcing Richie over to their friends. “No, please, take him. I changed my mind.”

Mike tilts his head. “Doubt it based on our phone conversations, but okay.”

Eddie points at him. _“Mike—”_

Before he can go off on their guest, the doorbell rings again.

Eddie drops his hand to frown at Richie. “Did you order pizza?”

Mike’s got a spring to his step as he goes to answer the door.

“What?” Richie says. “No, we just bought groceries.”

Bill snorts, but he’s fighting a smile. “That’s stopping you now? What are you, a grown up?”

“Yeah, Bill, a grown up with a budget, and my wallet’s not as fat as my—”

“Hey, check the peephole,” Eddie says to Mike as he swats at Richie. “This is a sketchy neighbourhood.”

Bill leans back to see who Mike’s answering the door to. “Yup, looks like some sketchy folks.”

For a second, Richie wonders if Lucas decided to return earlier than expected and had forgotten his key or something. 

But then a familiar voice says, “This is actually less worse than I was expecting.”

“Stan?” Richie says. He and Eddie share a look before rushing to crowd the kitchen doorway with Bill.

“Hope you don’t mind,” Mike says, holding the front door open. Stan, Patty, Bev and Ben spill into the house with overnight bags and big smiles. “We invited a few strays.”

Patty adjusts her backpack on her shoulder. “Please tell me you weren’t lying to Stan and you actually like me, or else this week is gonna be real awkward for you guys.”

“Peppermint Patty!” Richie shouts, and launches himself at her.

“Oh, is that sticking?” Stan sighs, mostly overcome by everyone greeting each other. “That’s what you’re going with?”

Richie reaches over Patty and smacks a kiss on Stan’s head. “Missed you too, Big Dick Uris.”

“Sorry, _what?_ ” Bev snickers.

“I’m going home,” Stan says, and they all laugh.

Richie and Eddie get them all settled in somewhere. Some of them will have to share a room or take the couch, but nobody minds. It ends up feeling like it’s gonna be a week-long sleepover with all their best friends.

They’ve spilled onto the back patio with drinks, and Mike’s brought a a portable grill so they’re heating up hot dogs like a real summer cook out, and Richie’s obnoxiousness meter is cranked to a hundred because he’s just so damn happy.

A few of them are sitting at the patio table, Patty’s manning the grill, and Bev and Bill are tossing around a volleyball that Richie doesn’t know the origins of.

Eddie returns from fetching Patty a pair of tongs (she’d been happy to move the hot dogs around with her fingers, but Eddie didn’t want burnt skin on his meal, go figure). Ben offers him his chair because they don’t have any more, but Richie grabs Eddie’s hip and tugs him into his lap.

“Don’t get up, Haystack, Eddie’s got the best seat in the house right here.”

Eddie adjusts until he’s sitting more primly at his knee instead of lounging against his chest. “I mean, an actual chair is the best seat in the house, ergonomically-speaking—”

Ben starts to rise, but Richie winks at him around Eddie’s shoulder. “His complaining is performative.”

“Lies and slander,” Eddie argues, but makes no move to stand.

Mike grins, shaking his head. “So it really was flirting all along. Damn.”

“Oh, I can flirt much better than that,” Richie says.

Ben lifts a brow. "Are you sure?"

Eddie laughs, tilting his head back against Richie's shoulder. "That skepticism is warranted."

“It’s okay.” Richie squeezes Eddie’s hips, not bothering to argue. “I make up for it with my spectacular kissing skills. Don’t I, babe?”

“I don’t know about spectacular,” Eddie mutters under his breath.

“You didn’t have any complaints last night—“

He twists to shoot him a glare. “Hard to talk when your entire tongue is in my mouth—“

Richie leans closer, wagging his tongue past his lips, “Like this?”

“God, you’re so gross!”

Laughter rises from their friends.

“Shit, if kissing’s all that’s keeping you together, good luck when Eddie leaves,” Mike says.

Richie pulls Eddie closer to his chest despite the heat.

Eddie will be leaving when the rest of them go home, a few days before school starts, to settle in and deep clean his new dorm room. Richie’s already missing him.

Bill jogs over to grab the volleyball that’s rolling under the table and says, “Hey, you can still waste all your money on train tickets.”

“And then it’s only two more years, right?” Mike lifts his can of beer. “And you can do whatever you want.”

“Think you’ll stay in New York?” Bill asks.

Eddie shudders. “As _if._ I’m sure LA has the better comedy scene anyway.”

Ben leans his head on his hand. “LA’s so far away though.”

“Get rich and famous fast, Richie,” Bev says from beside Patty. “So you can pay for all our plane tickets to visit you.”

Richie laughs. “That’ll be my top priority, Bevvie.”

Eddie spreads his hands. “We can go wherever, as long as we’re not in New York one second longer than we need to be.”

The ‘we’ of it all staggers Richie all over again. With summer winding down, Richie’s been focused on Eddie departure, but this isn’t the end. It’s a pause.

They’ve got one school year to overcome, and then another summer together, and then one final school year before the world’s wide open. And they’ll be back to waking each other up with neck kisses, and arguing about how much to spend on brand name ketchup, and taking late night walks, and coming home after long days to solid hugs and an open heart. They’ve got their whole lives to do this; get together with their incredible friends just like when they were kids.

The realization is a soft shock. 

There’s a clambering from the front of the house, and a moment later Clara’s yanking the screen door open. “Richie, why are there so many suitcases—oh. Christ.”

She takes in the losers—the amount of people in the house having tripled since she left last night.

“Hi!” Richie greets. “Uh… I told you I was having friends stay over, right?”

 _“All_ of them?”

He nods with a grin—more winning than apologetic.

“Oh my god, you’re already like the worst roommate,” she laments.

“Hi, you must be Clara,” Ben says, standing up and offering his hand to shake. “I’m Ben.”

That cues the rest of them.

“Oh, is that Clara?”

“You wanna join us?”

“It was the right move finally dumping Jordan, he sounded like a real asshole.”

Clara narrows her glare in at Richie. “Who the hell are these people and why do they know things about me?”

Before Richie can craft a reply to calm her down, Stan grows a smirk. “Hey, be honest, Richie’s a bad kisser, right?”

Clara’s face flushes red. “Tozier, I swear to god—”

“Ignore them, ignore them, come hang out with us.” Bev interrupts before she can finish her threat, and drags Clara over to the grill. “It’s nice to see you again. This is Patty.”

“You should come out with us tonight!” Patty invites. “You can heckle Richie.”

“No she can’t!” Richie argues. “No heckling allowed.”

“Why?” Clara asks suspiciously. “Where are you guys going?”

The bright lights of the hole-in-the-wall comedy club make Richie squint as he walks on stage. His slick palm slides right off the microphone when he tries to grab it.

He pulls a face and makes a big show of wiping his sweaty palms on his pants.

From the audience, Bev whoops.

Richie takes a deep breath. Most of the seats are filled; it’s amateur night and the crowd's already roasted a few of the performers before him.

But he only feels a _little_ like he's gonna puke; he's more excited than nervous, and it's all because his friends are here to support him.

Before trying to pick the mic up again, Richie says low into it, “As a heads up, if I’m not funny but you hear laughing anyway, it’s all those chucklefucks in the corner. My favourite people in the world.” He picks up the mic. “Except for Stan.”

“Hey, fuck you!” Stan calls, hand cupped around his mouth.

“That’s how he expresses affection,” he tells the crowd. “Just joking, Staniel. Love you, too! Now shut up and let me do my set.”

“Love you, Richie!” Eddie interjects anyway.

Richie’s smile curls his lips and his heart beats wildly in his chest. “Like the light of my life said, folks, I’m Richie Tozier. My friends call me Trashmouth, and tonight you’ll find out why…”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's that! I hope you liked it, I had a bit of trouble hitting all the emotional beats I wanted in this last chapter.  
> Thanks one last time for everybody's support, kudos and comments for this fic! I really appreciate it, and I'm glad so many people enjoyed this!  
> I'm over on tumblr at katranga as well, and [this is a post for this fic](https://katranga.tumblr.com/post/615144590164557824/the-we-of-it-all-77-it-stephen-king) if you feel like reblogging it over there.


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